Since early childhood I have held a special connection to nature and the bounty of experiences that Mother Earth provided.  I was one of those kids who put rocks in my mouth, rolled them around in my mouth to “hear” what they had to tell me.

Now, think about this.  I’m a kid.  I’m putting rocks in my mouth.  Put aside the ick-factor for a second; what part of warning signs screaming “Danger! You’re about to choke to death!”, did not happen for me?

By shutting my eyes I could hear any knowledge that the rocks wanted to share with me.  This was my thinking:  Stones are the oldest living thing on our planet.  They’ve seen a great deal of history pass by their “eyes”.  They MUST have recorded these events of early life forms and civilizations within themselves.  It was my job to extract the information and be sensitive enough to listen to the subtle voices.  Yes, this is how I thought.  No one told me this.  I told myself.

Our back yard had some pretty large boulders that doubled as its own rock climbing park.  I can remember how I used to hug them with outstretched arms, and place the side of my face against their face and feel the coolness and depth of their bodies.  I would talk to these large rocks and felt somewhat remorseful at the fact that they had been unearthed from the comfort of their own home, so ours could be built.  Referring to them as “grandfathers” I just felt they were the oldest remaining living things on the planet.

As a kid, dirt became an acquired taste.  Before our driveway got paved I had the best source of dirt for mud pies.  My Dad’s Ford drove over the same spots each day to and from work.  This action conveniently broke up the larger stones into smaller ones.  In a small tin pie pan filled with dirt I’d add water, stir to blend, and with a little shaping here and there I was finished with my recipe.

My hands would be covered with varying shades of taupe and little speckles of granite and quartz.  I’d keep my hands very still until the mud dried, then make a fist so the dried mud would start to curl backwards and fall away.  Patience was required to move a mud pie successfully onto the sidewalk for drying in a July Sun.  I’d lie under the big Elm tree in our front lawn and listen to the June bugs, their wings ticking away the hours, as I waited for my mud pie to dry.

There was an unmistakable smell about those minerals and how it interacted with my olfactory senses and imagination.  I feel the same way when I’m fortunate enough to work with clay.  There is an organic connection happening that just plain feels good as the coolness of the clay wakes up the circuitry within my cells.  Maybe that’s why I’m not especially concerned with dying and transforming my body back to dust.  It’s part of the same organic structure.  Like the mud pie, you change the consistency with water; it dries, then falls away to be reclaimed by the Earth again.

Once my mud pie was sufficiently dry, I’d hold it gingerly and take a bite.  The gritty, dry sensation of this act never seemed to register as odd behavior.  And it’s not as if I sat there and ate the whole thing, usually a small bite or two was enough to satisfy my particular yen for some minerals I obviously felt was denied.

While going through the motions of making the mud pies, tasting them, I felt in some way it was connecting me with Mother Earth in the very earliest of her years – her childhood.  I wanted to experience in some minute way an earthy umbilical connection.

Sensitive kids march to their own beat.  They seek levels of trying to understand their place on this planet by reverting to primitive rituals.  Even though my early childhood took place in the on-the-surface benign years of the ‘50’s, Nature Spirits were sing-songing my name to be aware – to listen to their voices.

It doesn’t matter what the years, what your age – can you even hear when these Spirits call you to a level of connection that is so abstract you consider it to be part of your norm?  That you don’t question the calling or doubt why you think a certain way?  It’s a knowing.  Knowing who you are; knowing your place in the Universe, and knowing its okay to answer the call.

Tags: baby boomers, Ford, Grandfather Stone, knowing your place in the Universe, minerals, mud pies, olfactory, putting rocks in your mouth, sing-song, Stone People, stoned