Sticks and Stones

Heal My Bones, my Wild Heart and My Soul

That children’s rhyme popped into my head this morning. It’s about resiliency when there’s name calling or verbal bullying. We’ve all experienced our share of that, and so it’s a good reminder:

“Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me.”

And I’m a collector of sticks and stones, and a million other treasures found in Nature. It occurred to me that having them close by,  they heal me, calm me and remind me that I’m connected to every living breathing being around me.

A little girl visiting the house once proclaimed that my house looked like an explorer lived here! No one’s ever cited me as an explorer before, and perhaps in my own way, I am as I explore the wonders that are all around us.

The simple things, and the crafted things, beginning here:

I love that piece of London Plane tree bark with the hole in it. I look through that hole, through the eyes of a tree. What is it like to see with the eyes of a tree? It became an invitation on a forest walk.

And those drilled river stones … I’ve used them on walks, too. For a group of at risk teens, they carried their stones, asking them to hold something for them that they didn’t need to hold on our walk. At the end of our time together, I poured water into a basin and they all dropped their stones into the water. The stones came alive with color! I invited them to thank their stones for holding whatever they asked them to, and now to think of them as their personal gifts. Sometimes, we can’t see them. Others can’t see them. It only takes one element, in this case water, to reveal our gifts. But they are always there!!

I’ve also used them on private walks as friendship stones, a reminder that we are never alone, and had friends create a pendant to wear or hang and exchange them with their friend.

The London Plane trees in my neighborhood volunteer such beautiful branches, found on the ground, never removed from a tree. I love to wrap them with colored yarn or thread and weave in hag stones, feathers, beads. I use black walnuts that have been discarded by squirrels after they’ve enjoyed the tasty sweet walnut meat, pinecones, and acorns. I include sea glass when I can find it. These branches hang in my home office. Some just rest on shelves and tabletops.

And, glass. I love old glass. A sea-tossed bottle or two, or three, a jar with feathers on a weathered painted table.

And the fourth photo, two stones from my recent trip to Maine. The layers upon layers of compression making them more like little works of art than stones or rocks. I feel their age and agelessness from a time when the Earth as we know it today was still forming and creating itself.

And this bare branch from my Harry Lauder Walking Stick tree in the photo below … how could I not add this wispy, delicate bird’s nest found on the ground, empty, in my yard? Jeanie Tomanek' s Milkweed print seems a perfect backdrop, doesn’t it?

That’s just a small sample of my collection. I’m curious. What do you collect from Nature that helps you feel whole and belonging to something greater than yourself?

I’ll close with this lovely poem I found.

With love and light and awe,

Linda