Alex McKenzie

  • Alex McKenzie
  • Personal
    • Autobiographical Anecdotes >
      • Breakfast - 1940s & 50s
      • Those Were the Days - 1950s
      • Building Underwater Gear, 1950's
      • Can't Let Go - 1953
      • The Turning Point, 1957
      • Mexico, October 1965
      • Bilbo Baggins 1971
      • A brush with death? 1977
      • What I didn't do, 1979
      • Brazil 1996
      • Family Dinner Time
      • Forbidden Fruit
      • Solo Sailing Incident, ca 2000
      • Joel Nichols - 2013
      • Manatees, January 2014
      • Motorcycle Incident, June 2014
      • Time is a Thief, 2015
      • Never Too Old to Learn, 2015
      • Two Weeks in Rockport MA 2015
      • A Fork in the Road - 2016
      • The Winos
      • Smooth Stones
      • Change
      • No One Would Have Guessed ... - 2017
      • What I Discovered ...
      • At This Time of Year ... 2017
    • AMC Trail Crew >
      • The Trail Crew in Appalachia >
        • With the Trail Gang
        • Recovery of the Old Bridle Path on Mt. Lafayette
        • The Trail Spree of 1929
        • Webster Cliff Trail 1912-1914
        • Trail Bridges
        • The Story of the Mahoosuc
        • 1939 trail report
        • June 1940 trail report
        • Dec 1940 trail report
        • 1941 trail plan
        • A Vacation With Pay
        • 25 Years of the AMC Trail Crew
        • Five Thousand Trail Signs
        • The AMC Trail System
        • The Pace of the Grub-Hoe
        • 1953 trails report
        • 1954 trails report
        • trail report - call for volunteers
        • Trail Erosion
        • Ethan Pond Shelter
        • An Early AMC Trail Crew
        • Great Gulf Shelter
        • The AMC Trail Crew 1919-1964
        • The Evolution of a Trailman
        • Trail Crew Thoughts
        • Trail Design. Construction & Maintenance
        • Of Mules, Mice, and Madison
        • The Green Plate Special
        • 1980-81 trails report
        • Trail Blazers
        • White Mountain Trail Crew - 75 Years
      • 1960 Trail Crew Resignation
    • 2017 Summer Trip
  • Professional
    • Technical Background
    • BBN Reports >
      • The Hospital Computer Project Time-Sharing Executive System >
        • Cover and Tables of Contents
        • Preface
        • Introduction
        • I. The Hardware Environment
        • II. The Swapper
        • III. The Dispatcher
        • IV. The I-O Processor
        • V. Teletype Service Routine and Other "Slow" I-O
    • Articles >
      • Host/Host Protocol for the ARPA Network
      • Comments on Kleinrock's claims
      • INWG and the Conception of the Internet: An Eyewitness Account
      • Watergate Tapes
    • History of the Internet
    • Seeking High IMP Reliability
    • David Corydon Walden's Five Careers
  • INWG Documents
  • Family
    • Alexander A. McKenzie II >
      • Mount Washington >
        • Genesis of the Observatory
        • World Record Wind
      • LORAN >
        • Crusing the Labrador
        • Acquisition of Canadian sites for Long-Range-Navigation Stations
        • Sites #1 and #2: Loran Memo #108
        • LRN Site No. 3
        • Report of Construction at L.R.N. Site #3, 8/10-11/5 1942
        • LRN Site No. 4 (Bonavista Point, Newfoundland)
        • Supplies for Site 4
        • Drawings Left at Site #4 by A.A. McKenzie
        • Site 4 Letter of March 24, 1943
        • LRN Site No. 5
        • LRN Site No. 8
        • LRN Site No. 9
        • Test Plan - Eastern US
        • LORAN - Part 1
        • LORAN - Part 2
        • LORAN - Part 3
        • End of LORAN
    • Genealogy >
      • Athelstan & Burke - 2010
  • Photos
    • Europe 2015 -first half >
      • Barcelona April 2015
      • Pont du Gard France - April 24, 2015
      • Nimes France - April 27, 2015
      • Aix-en Provence - April 28, 2015
      • Cote d'Azur - April 29, 2015
      • Vence to Gourdon - April 30, 2015
      • Eze France - May 1, 2015
      • Milano - May 3, 2015
      • Parco Burchina - May 6, 2015
      • Ivrea & Aosta Valley - May 7, 2015
      • Torino - May 9, 2015
    • Europe 2015 - second half >
      • Barga - May 13, 2015
      • Upper Danube - May 17, 2015
      • Hohenzoller Castle - May 18, 2015
      • Tubingen - May 23, 2015
      • Heuneberg - May 24, 2015
      • Brussels - May 26, 2015
      • Durbuy, Belgium - May 28, 2015
      • Switzerland - June 1-3
      • Venice: Along the Canals - June 3-5
      • Venice: Interiors - June 3-4
    • Indianapolis Art Museum - July 2015
    • Ringling Estate
    • Oak Park 2017
    • Frank Lloyd Wright in Florida
  • Edit Website

Smooth Stones

The power of wind, water, and roots. The vastness of time. These are the thoughts that come to my mind when I see smooth stones – on a beach, in a stream bed, or on display. Almost certainly, these stones came to the earth's surface as part of a mountain range, lifted slowly into the air by the inexorable collision of tectonic plates, or condensed from liquid rock expelled by a volcanic eruption. They were probably quite irregular in shape, often even jagged. Very likely they were huge; a great sea of flowed lava or enormous sheets of cold mountain rock. Over immeasurable time the huge rocks were broken down into smaller pieces as a result of countless cycles of freezing and thawing water, or by tiny roots growing into cracks and gradually expanding. The rock was also acted on by flowing air or water carrying dust or sand, slowly grinding down sharp corners and points. The dust or sand created by this grinding in turn was carried downwind or downstream to grind and polish other rocks. Eventually, in spans of time that exceed individual lifetimes, the lifetimes of countries and empires, or perhaps even the lifetime of the human race, these rocks became the smooth stones that give us feelings of pleasure.

There is a beach in Rockport Massachusetts that consists entirely of smooth stones mostly about a foot or two in diameter. These smooth stones exert such a powerful force on the human imagination that it was necessary to make their removal illegal to prevent the shoreline from disappearing. I don't understand this force at all, but I share the common desire to remove some of these smooth stones and make them “mine”. Do they remind us of our own insignificance? Do we think that by controlling the stones we gain some control over the vast forces that made them so smooth? Or does seeing their polished form reassure us that the things which trouble us last just a blink of an eye in comparison to the duration of the world?

Written as an assignment for the writers' group at The Fountains in August 2016 on this topic.


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