Feature Story
Serendipity
I
sit on a river gravel bar letting the sun soak its warmth deep into my bones. It’s early March, and after a long, cold winter, it felt good. Birds were singing. Like me, they were tired of the cold and were celebrating with song. The sound of flowing water blended with their chorus.
I stack all the “holey” rocks I find in a pile. Some will be slipped on to a length of wire and hung in trees around the house to serve as weather rocks. When you want to know what the weather is, you just look outside at the rocks. If they are wet it’s raining, and if they are white it’s snowing, and if they are moving it’s very, very windy.
As my mind wanders, I poke around in rocks of all sizes and shapes that surround me. How long had they been there? Where had these rocks come from, and how did the holes get in some of them? What are those fossils of in some of them?
The rocks are dull shades of black, gray, tan, brown and white — some sparkle when the light hits them just right. Most are worn smooth from being tumbled through the water. The flat, smooth rocks are what I am looking for now. These are “skipping” rocks.
Did you know rocks are like clouds? If you look really close, you see things in them. This one looks like the state of Texas, this one like a heart. Here’s one that looks like Dolly Parton. Sometimes your mind sees crazy things when you sit alone on a gravel bar on an early spring day.
I stand, stretch, and position my feet just right, look out at the water, and with a sidearm motion, send the first “skipping” rock flying across the water. Six skips! Not bad, but I can do better. Four skips! That was a bad throw. My feet must have slipped. Eight skips! That’s better.
52
CONSERVATION FEDERATION
