The Perfect Rock
When I was twenty years old and living in Austria, I had the opportunity to do some work at a castle. There were many projects to choose from; I chose to build rock gardens and retaining walls from the stones and rocks collected and dug out of the mountainside. Sometimes I would go searching for the perfect rock, and when I found it, I would ask some of the strong guys who also were working on the grounds of the castle to help me bring it to my garden. Sometimes I would just show them a rock and say, “I need twenty rocks about this size. Try to find round ones.”
Later in my life when my husband and I traveled through the walled villages of Italy, we always enjoyed the beauty of the stonework all around: stone walkways, stone streets, and stone fireplaces. I always wondered about the people who carefully built each structure—some had been built more than a thousand years ago and were still standing, still beautiful, unchanged. I would run my hand over the cool stones and wonder where each one came from, and then I would look out over the countryside where wild streams and rugged paths twisted and turned among the hills. Scattered about were more stones. Where did they all come from? Over the years I have enjoyed traveling to many places with stone streets, stone bridges, even castles and fortresses, and someday I know that I will be a stonemason. For now, I’m just busy raising children.