The Forgetting Stones

Sometimes, when I am troubled and my mind is filled with stocky little construction workers jackhammering at my emotions, I will leave the front door of my house and walk into the hills directly surrounding.

Yesterday found me so distressed.  A friend’s father gone early in the morning.  My own struggles to pin-down a more exact form of happiness.  At the highest sun, I exited my house and wandered eastward into the now dry hills. Most of these hills are comprised of diluvium from flooding that marked the end of the last ice age some ten-thousand years ago.

Not far into the hills, I came across a shoulder of earth where a variety of stones have pushed themselves up through the loam and grasses.

Beautiful stones.  Some finely polished by ancient waters.  Rough fists of schist.   Opaque stones.  Stones marbled-through with festive colors.  Deep red stones.  Deep blue stones.  Shales.  Quartz.  Stones with stripes.  Striking unknowns.

Soon, I found myself taking up stones to examine them.  I burnished a few with my fingers and palms.  I licked some to wet them and announce deeper colors.  I scrubbed smaller specimens against the shirt on my chest.  I nudged at half-buried rocks with my feet.  I carefully replaced stones—exactly as I found them—if they did not fully send me.

Each stone a pretty and complete thing in itself.  Their exact places of origin a wonderful mystery to me.

Within a half hour, my mind became a quiet place.

I filled my pockets filled with the forgetting stones.

After something over an hour spent crisscrossing the shoulder of earth, I returned home heavier in stone but lighter in mind.

—Mitchell Hegman