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.