≈ ONE PERSON’S WALK IS ANOTHER PERSON’S STUDIO ≈

∞ A Rock Is Not A Rock ∞

About a five-minute walk from my home sits roughly forty acres of open woodlands, stitched together with a quiet network of asphalt paths. They wind past a meadow that looks suspiciously like it’s waiting for someone with a canvas, a paintbrush, and talent.

This small gift of nature exists thanks to a nearby rehab facility that owns the land and allows local residents to use it. The paths were built with intention, so recovery could include fresh air, steady movement, and the tranquility as important to health as the rehab. Without the pavement, it would be a proper woods trail, roots, rocks, potential ankle-twisting steps. The paths make nature way more accessible.

I walk there often with my dog, who has far more pressing woodland concerns, primarily squirrel chasing. Along the way, I pass a rotating cast of residents. The stays are short, a week or two, so the faces change often. But the conversations don’t.

“Beautiful day.”

“Not so beautiful day.”

“How’s it going?”

“Good. I’ll be out of here by Tuesday.”

Names aren’t exchanged. They don’t need to be. These are walk-by friendships, light, polite, and exactly the right size for the moment.

And then there was Charles.

Not Charlie. Not Chuck. Charles.

Charles had been an Art Professor at one of the small private colleges up in Vermont. If you asked for an AI generated picture of “quiet Vermont professor that knows things,” it would probably come up with a picture of Charles. He had that look, part thoughtful, part amused, like he was in on something the rest of us were still buffering on.

And for years I’d meet him on the trails, and he, like the others, was always leaving “by Tuesday”. It became a quiet inside joke. He’d say it with a smile and a twinkle in his eye. I’d smile back, (but my eyes don’t twinkle). I didn’t fully understand it, but I understood it.

Charles didn’t talk much about why he was there. Occasionally he wore a walking boot, but didn’t talk about it. What he did talk about, what he shared, was different.

This One's Mine :)

Out there in the woods, during his walks, Charles would build sculptures using whatever he found, stones, branches, the occasional obliging boulder. Sometimes the boulder was the base. Sometimes it was part of the piece. Always, it mattered.

One day, he picked up a rock, held it out, and said something that stuck:

A rock is not just a rock.

It’s a fragment of something far older, part of a mass that’s been around for over four billion years. Some rocks hold fossils, quiet evidence of life that existed long before we started worrying about emails, social media and cholesterol. They are records, archives of Earth’s long, complicated story. They were here before there was a “here.” They’ll be here long after. It’s a bit humbling, shifts your perspective a bit.

Eventually, “next Tuesday” came for Charles. I know this because I stopped seeing him. No goodbye, no announcement, just gone. But his work stayed.

Scattered throughout the woods were his quiet creations. Small, thoughtful arrangements of stone and balance. And I noticed that when a piece shifted or fell, I or someone would gently set it back. A rock returned. A branch lifted. Like we were all, in some unspoken way, caretakers of his studio.

Charles once described his process, though not in any formal sense. He didn’t go out intending to make a bird or a house. He started with a base, usually a boulder, and with stones as his medium let them guide him. One shape would suggest another. One balance would invite the next. He never labeled his work. Never explained what anything “was.” And somehow, that made it more challenging, more meaningful. “Eye of the beholder” as it were.

Thanks to Charles, these small rock structures have begun to appear in my gardens, even as gardens in and of themselves. And for that, they’re perfect. They give you a chance to be creative, they take up space, they require no watering, no feeding, no care, and there’s no stress about whether they’ll make it through the winter.

So now on my walks through the woods with the unpaved trails, I’ve become a rock collector, looking for unusual ones in shape or color or form to be my medium. I pair them with larger stones back at home to create my version of rock art. The trees, streams, wetlands and stone bridges I know by heart have now become a familiar place with a new purpose.

It offers a thoughtful hands-on pause. Because let’s be honest, a lot of what fills our heads isn’t helpful. News cycles, opinions, things we can’t control, things we could control but haven’t gotten around to, they add up and need somewhere to go. Conjuring art and balancing stones is mindful, and, for me, an effective outlet.

Building the structures isn’t about art, I’m not an artist. But the process requires much focus, which quiets everything else. You hold the stones, billions of years old, feel their weight, adjust angles by fractions, get your hands dirty and, relying on a combination of basic physics and cautious optimism, you create something with them. When it works, it feels like a small miracle. When it doesn’t, it’s still cool. It’s humbling. It’s grounding. And maybe that’s the point.

So next time you're walking through the woods, look around, find a good base stone, some smaller stones and get creative.

You don’t need to be an artist.

Just appreciate that a rock is not just a rock.

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Some Thoughts for Spring