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Every stone was different. It kept you slightly unbalanced to move from one stone to the next. I could almost circle the whole island by walking its stone border. I say almost because there was one stone, a boulder really, that blocked the path. So many of us climbed it and stood over the lake, it’s dark, sometimes choppy waters imperceptibly worried the giant piece of granite ever smoother over the decades. The circle completed with a moment of contemplation.
The stones near the ocean were different. They were smoother
and made slippery by the water’s incessant waves. But still I walked them to
nowhere in particular. Each step was a test to see if I could put my full
weight upon it or only lightly land, using it as a steppingstone to the next.
This directionless journey was full of near slips and slides or being thrown
off balance by loose stones. Though there was no destination, no completion
except returning to flat ground, somehow moving over those stones moved
something in me.
I crossed the stream in the woods by way of the stones that rose just above the
waterline. It was a small stream in the woods behind the school. It flowed all
the way into town. I had to go deep into the woods to reach it, to walk its
stones, to hear the music the water created moving over and around them. It was
like a dance to pick my way across and back again. The to and fro always
brought me back to myself.
My childhood is mapped with the stones I walked upon, the stones I climbed, the
stones I fell on, the stones that supported me during those times I needed to
flee my reality. It’s been years since I walked the stones. I suppose the last
time was in the mountains a decade ago. The Southern California granite beige
instead of Nova Scotia grey. Stones that weren’t scattered by the glaciers of
the last ice age but protrude from the ground, always there.
I miss the stones. On my altar are two small ones from Nova Scotia. I never
gathered any from the mountains where we once had a cabin. But I have walked the
ground of this place. I have moved over the landscape and mapped my last 20
years in steps that have turned here into home.
