Maine rocks

Photo by Michael

My family are rock people. My father's father's family quarried granite, as did other branches of the family that came from England around the same time (and my theory is that my family name is corrupted from a term related to carrying stone). My father's mother's family name is Blackstone. The foundations of my parents' house and barn is granite slab and fieldstone, none of which traveled from far away before it supported a home. My niece picks up rocks no matter where she is. I personally breathe a sigh of relief whenever I see bedrock exposed to the air. My favorite beach in Hawaii wasn't sandy, it was the one that was entirely black stone ranging from too big to carry in one hand all the way down to too small to bother you between your toes.

These Maine rocks are pretty small. You could put half a dozen of them in your pocket if you didn't greedily choose the largest ones. Or you could choose a few and stack them, adding a bit of instability to the landscape.

Outside the house where we stayed there was a rock too big to even call a boulder. The exposed part was the size of one of the rooms in our house. It made me feel grounded and calm---the tides would come and go, but that rock was going nowhere, no matter how hard my niece tried to move it and we both wished we could bring it home. (By "we" I mean me and my niece. I don't know if Michael lusted after that same rock.)

---Lisa