Ecotone: Writing About Place: StonesAndRocks

[OntheRocks] I have been a rock fan for years, but I can't qualify as a rock "hound" because I can't remember what they're called. The nice thing about rocks, though, is that they aren't offended when you get their names wrong. -- P.

[London and the North] Photos of.......

[Older and Growing] ...But if you know where to look, the evidence of that skeleton is there. Rock climbers have been searching out these places for decades; there’s hardly a crag or outcrop in the country that hasn’t been discovered, explored, tested, documented and revisited countless times. To the casual passer by, the significance of these places may be hardly noticed –at times picturesque, brooding, decaying; yet to the climber places of challenge, adrenalin, focus, self-discovery; places to come home to, revisiting old friends. For the climber gets to know these rocks intimately; all their forms, features, colours, textures and hidden places...

[Feathers of Hope (Numenius)] The most famous rock in Berkeley.

[Switched At Birth] It was a mid-June late afternoon in Bass Harbor, Maine. The tide was close to dead low. Buck and I walked out to the farthest point on the rocks. Sharp rocks, slippery places and pools teeming with life, we had to take care in placing each step. Thousands of mussels glistened blackly, shimmering silver, green and purple. The sea gulls wheeled hungrily overhead. . .

[Mulubinba Moments] It was eerily silent and brooding. The Culbone Stone as it is called was standing in the middle of a tiny clearing, completely on its own.

[Fragments from Floyd] ...I belonged in the mountains. The massive enormity of them, the permanence and the subterranean reality of rock was a subconscious metaphor for that which one can build a life upon and trust to endure. I would live in the mountains and build my life upon a rock. Here was Permanence. A sure foundation. Some are attracted to the sea to which all matter moves; I wanted to live near the source, the high places, the rocky peaks where clouds roosted and streams began: the mountains. The constant, the immutable mountains.

[Feathers of Hope (Pica)] Stone: permanence. Human interaction with stone: human attempt to project permanence.

[Hoarded Ordinaries] The woods behind the monastery became my refuge. Sore and achy from too many hours spent cross-legged, I'd walk the woods with long, smooth strides. Several foot-beaten trails wended their way among isolated rocks, glacial erratics; the monastery itself is built on stone, its pilings driven directly into granite. Each night I'd retire to my basement bedroom with its window overlooking a small pond, trees, and those very pilings rooted in rock, my dreams nested in the earth's stony breast.

[Mulubinba Moments] Uluru - Rock of Spirits.

[bird on the moon] As a child, my pockets were always full of stones. I’d go to the riverbank, and collect stones for a whole afternoon, on the virtues of their color, size, shape and texture. Stones taught me my first lessons in uniqueness, and finding heaven within remarkably small details. Some of the ‘best’ of those years remain with me, though now it’s rare that I’ll keep a stone that has settled along my path. But I’ll pause to bend down, touch, observe, and for a moment hold the cold stillness in my hand, ponder it’s millions of years in age, and let it go...

[Cirrus]...But it's the cairns that make a statement. Along our path, and on the other paths in the open plateau, stand eerie piles of stones on guard--like sentries. Over the last hundred years or so, many a traveller have collaboratively constructed these signposts to help guide hikers through the common phenomena of fog, mist, and snow. On many days, hikers find their way to the summit only by walking cairn to cairn--with faith...