Columnists

About as important as a box of rocks 

By Becky Nelson 

I have been a rockhound since I was old enough to pick up a pretty rock. My kitchen sink-shelf has several “beauties” that I have picked up on walks and at work, and I enjoy looking at them. My Dad, too, was a rock saver, and we have a pile of pretty rocks he saved out on top of a storage container at the farm. He has been gone for several years, but I just can’t seem to move them out. Seeing the pile of rocks reminds me of word games we occasionally had, as well when Dad taught us about the earth’s crust and the many types of rocks and stones made — igneous, sedimentary, metamorphic — usually ending in “well I don’t give a schist, well isn’t that gneiss?” 

I admire folks that pile rocks atop one another at the ocean, on top of a cliff, beside a stream or by a hiking trail to commemorate their accomplishment or mark an important moment. Every time I am near the ocean, I try to visit the little cove near Rye Beach where lots of these towers decorate the beach, and every time I am near a stream or hiking trail myself, I try to leave my mark. My daughter calls them inukshuk, like the rock mounds built by Indigenous people in Canada and Alaska, though I think my habit runs in my blood from my Scottish and Irish ancestors who built towers and cairns in important places. 

I am always stopping to take a photo of an interesting rock, which must drive my husband crazy. Some of my favorites are rocks plopped by the retreat of glaciers. I found just such a rock the other day as we walked in a woodlot here at the farm, looking to see where we needed to repair maple tubing. Sitting on top of a hillside in the woods, the rock looked like a metamorphic boulder dropped by the glacier. It had been squished together beneath the earth’s crust and composed of several different specimens. A true beauty, but as it was as tall as I am, I wouldn’t be able to lug it home to add to the rock pile. Beside the rock was a sentinel hemlock tree. I couldn’t resist a photo. 

We have gathered all sorts of rocks at the farm for different purposes, repairing foundations beneath buildings, as doorsteps, even as gravestones. 

Funny thing about rocks and minerals, not only are they pretty sometimes, but they are valuable. Organic matter made into rocks are valuable as coal and if pressurized enough, as diamonds. Gems are rocks. Gravel and sand are crushed rocks used in myriad ways. We build walls with rocks, houses with rocks and patios with rocks. Rocks are good, but they also take a bad rap. “Dumber than a box of rocks,” “rigid as stone,” “go kick rocks,” “hitting rock bottom,” “between a rock and a hard place.” It’s amazing how such a mundane item is so important in our lives. 

I liken rocks to people. There are pretty ones, sharp ones, round ones, smooth ones, useful ones and ones in the way of what we want to accomplish. There are also the rocks that go unnoticed as we walk on them, toss them out of our way or plow them up and remove them from our fields. Maybe we ought to pay more attention to those we walk on, both the people and the rocks. We just might find a gem.