He has witnessed a cascading waterfall of ten billion golden, orange and crimson expressions of his tree kin’s love for the earth rain down on him and the forest floor over centuries and millennia of his long life. Leaves caressing him lovingly one moment, become rich living soil the next within his geological temporal scale of perception.

He is seen as a home for lichen and moss beings and a protector and respected friend to countless soil dwelling beings salamanders, frogs, rabbits, chickadees, foxes, raccoons, turkeys and deer.

He has felt the earth reverberate and tremble when giant star light drinking rooted elders came crashing down to the earth during dozens of tornadoes. He kept his calm and despite feeling for the loss of his tall arboreal kin, he found solace in the knowing from his long memory that he could befriend new rooted kin that would find a nurturing home in the living earth the elders bodies would create.

He has looked up through several feet of water after freak storms flooded the entire landscape and his memory goes so far back he remembers feeling nothing but ice around him.

He sings and tells stories in a frequency beyond the perception of most two leggeds except for the rare few that sit with him long enough to align their awareness with his heartbeat that reaches across seasons.

He holds the ancient memory of the young earth when rivers of molten rock flowed freely on her body.

He is a humble and gentle custodian of life, a fragment of the heart of Gaia, and despite the the vast span of his life he knows that all things must pass and gracefully embraces his destiny to one day become part of the living soil he rests upon to give back to future generations of his younger tall rooted kin which he has loved over the eons.

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This is the first of a series of notes I’ll be posting that honor stone beings. I already post a lot of notes honoring tall rooted starlight drinking beings (trees) but I do not want our more ancient kin in the community of “stone people” (as Lyla June refers to them) to feel left out so I want to give them their own space to be honored, seen and appreciated as well.

I always felt drawn to interact with stones, rocks, boulders, crystals, ore veins cliff faces, pebbles, sand and Stone Mountain mountain sides since I was young and I even remember asking my parents when I was young if rocks are alive and have a spirit (something I sensed intuitively and was looking to confirm with my elders). My birth parents did not possess an awareness of seeing stones as beings as their connection to the place based animistic cultures of their ancestors was severed long ago (many generations before they were born) and instead of cultivating innate intuitive awareness they accepted the anthropocentric narratives of modern industrial civilization. Their answer to my query did not deter my curiosity and acknowledgement of stones as beings , rather just forced it underground for a while, emerging more recently as I seek to engage in ancestral remembering.

Today, as someone that respects the perspectives of my indigenous ancestors (the Gael/Welsh and others) I choose to see and speak of our mineral relatives as kin, taking time to learn to read and listen to their ancient languages, hear the stories they share and respect them as I would any other being.

This series is intended to honor the beings of the mineral kingdom with a photo and story for each stone being.

I want to give a shout out to my man Boring Rocks for Nerds 🍪 my dear soul sister Barbara Sinclair , my beloved Johrey M. and Lyla June for each offering inspiration to remind me of the beauty and stories stone people offer us.

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(Picture taken on Turtle Island, aka “North America”, on the eastern woodlands near the north shore of Lake Erie. In one of the last few pockets of intact Carolinian forest left in the region most know as “Canada”)