Hello, my name is Scads! I actually gave myself the name. In human years I am about 10,000 years old. My parent rock (you might refer to her as mother) is actually a small mountain that resides in what is now known as the Berkshire Mountain range in Massachusetts. Mom left me, and a lot of my siblings behind as she receded from where she dropped me in Wilton CT.
We were all left behind during her retreat north to her permanent home at the end of the last Ice Age. Actually, we rocks do not think in terms of years but rather in increments known as strops! A single strop is the equivalent of about 500 years, so I am approximately 40 strops old. My life expectancy is likely close to around 160+ strops or more, depending upon climate changes, prevailing winds and/or natural upheavals. Just about my only natural enemy is molten lava, but, I age considerably if I experience cracking. Cracking happens when water gets into my blemishes then freezes, expands and cracks the surface. So far, my surface is pretty clean, so that is a good sign.
I have seen so much from my vantage point here in Wilton, CT. You may think it is boring to sit in one place day after day for hundreds of years, but that is simply not the case. Stillness provides perspective and insight that is otherwise unavailable if you are always on the move. In a single strop I get to see 2000 seasonal changes and more than 6000 full moons! I will see thousands of sun rises and sunsets. birds often perch on my nose, and I have had dozens of birds nest right in my eye sockets! I have to admit I would really love to travel a little, even if it was just to visit with the rock on the other side of the field. Yet, I am grateful that I am not just one of the thousands of rocks living as a stone wall just off of my right shoulder running for miles through the woods.
Here are some of the many other changes I have seen during the past forty or fifty strop of years. And since I have plenty of time, I really get to study and experience the changes. Some changes seem as though they will be permanent while others will be more fleeting. The three most dynamic changes have been the appearance of a human population, just about the same time as my mother deposited me here in New England. Second is that the weather where I reside has gotten 2 or 3 degrees warmer on average and third is that the variety of plants and trees has increased dramatically. The human population has become much more prolific, and much taller, and much more destructive to the environment. Conflict between humans makes it seem likely that they could become extinct within the next very short period of time….perhaps as soon as before the completion of the current strop (maybe 200 years). It will not matter much to me but I am hopeful that humans can live here many strops into the future. They really seem to have a lot of destructive habits, anger and bad behavior.
I am not really a deep thinker and I have, I think, only average intelligence for a rock. I do have a good sense of humor though, and that helps over long stretches of time. Time also increases my sense of irony, particularly with regard to humans. The most common irony I observe about humans is how over reactive they are. Emotions experienced and expressed by humans in the moment seem never to take into account how quickly the original experience that caused the reaction may be forgotten and become irrelevant. I guess I might feel differently if my lifetime was the average length of one eighth of one strock, such as the life span of a human. But really, when you think about it, what would be the benefit of holding on to a painful grudge during such a short existence. Seems foolish to me.
I am certain that I will not have children like my mom was able to have. I sometimes wonder if she ever thinks about me. It seems that it would be highly unlikely, particularly because she has likely given birth to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of my siblings. But I am grateful that this one has noticed me, stopped to greet me, and took my picture!
It is really hard to make friends and get to know someone better if you are a rock. That is why I am particularly grateful for perspective, patience, stoicism, and an understanding of the big picture. It will likely be long after the time when I am no longer even a rock, having been reduced to a single grain of sand, that all of the infinite number of universes will eventually reveal all of their secrets of being, at which time the cosmos will return to its birth from…….NOTHINGNESS! Well, that’s just a thought...
Yours truly,
Scads