Agate is a translucent variety of chalcedony, a quartz stone that can be either clear or colored from other minerals. It comes in many shapes and patterns and all colors (although green and blue are rare) and you can usually find them near rivers, streams or my favorite, at the sea. Usually a little heavier than most rocks, agates often sink or hide beneath other stones.

When I was nine or so, I got to spend a week in a cottage at the beach with my mother while my father stayed in the city. He brought us down on a Saturday then left on Sunday for the work week. I’d been all excited over a few agates I’d found, and he was skeptical that I could find very many more. My father bet me I couldn’t find 100 agates by the time he returned on Friday, and said he’d pay me a penny a piece if I did collect that many. I believe my allowance was about 25 cents a week then (a very long time ago!) so that sounded like easy riches to me.

The next morning I was up early hunting a wide stretch of Oregon beach for the bright, translucent stones. Within an hour I realized there were layers of stones under the sand, and all I had to do was sit down and sift through them, and I’d find dozens of agates within the reach of my arms. By the end of Day One I had over 100.

Feeling the first thrill of greed and success in my enterprise, I devoted the bulk of my time that week to mining agates.

Why agates? There’s something appealing about the way they catch the light and sparkle in wet sand, and at least on the West Coast, there’s long been a tradition of collecting them. Even now, if you walk into any seaside souvenir shop, you’ll find polished agates for sale—which adds to the sense that they have some intrinsic monetary value. Also, they come in intricate patterns, and they feel good in your hand. Finding a forgotten agate in a pocket always makes me smile.

By the time my father returned, he was astounded (and no doubt irked) to have to pay me over six dollars for a buckets of rocks. While I remember being excited over my windfall and rather smug at proving my overbearing father wrong, in hindsight it was a hollow victory. I recall feeling somewhat let down when we packed to go home the next day, because I suddenly looked at the art supplies I hadn’t touched, the books I barely opened, the kite I hadn’t flown—all the things I’d being eager to enjoy during that precious week had ignored in my agate obsession.

Besides, what would I do with over 600 agates? Well, my father did buy a rock tumbler which we set up in the garage, and it noisily polished my best finds over the course of the months to follow. Still, those semi-precious stones have long since disappeared into the mists of my childhood. Isn’t that an ironic term? While the agates were seemingly precious to me at the time, in reality that was only half true, because I sacrificed a lot of other quality experiences in order to hoard so many stones.

Now I rarely pick up an agate unless it’s something really special—I’d rather leave it on the beach for someone to find who hasn’t already found more than her fair share.

CONTEMPLATIONS

• Have you ever hoarded something you found in nature?
• How did it make you feel?
• Did you keep your finds?
• Are there special stones that you’re attracted to?
• Have you succumbed to obsessions regarding natural objects?

Hold other mineral allies in your hands here.

These Miocene fossils carry the imprint of animals from an era so long gone it is nearly unknowable. Yet the images are familiar: a snail shell, a spiral nautilus and this scallop shell, once home to a living being who knew these shores ice ages ago.

To hold this relic in my hand connects me to my evolution, to my own watery past—perhaps even on these same shores. Was I once this scallop? Did I crawl onshore seeking something else, something better? Was I this intertidal adventurer, both of the sea and the beach?

There is alchemy here, too: the transformation of an animal into stone, which inspires visions of my own possible immortality. When my bones are returned to the earth will I someday become a poplar? A lilac? Petrified sequoia? Or if I am scattered at sea, might I one day transmute into a living coral reef and become home to another generation of sea life?

This twenty-million-year-old scallop fossil is evidence of a vast permanence beyond my comprehension—and yet, also the transitory nature of animal life—especially my own. Each time I touch it, the stone urges me to live my life with intensity, with aim, with focus—and builds in me a desire to leave some marker of my own presence here, something worth preserving.

The shell even gives its name to the pattern of waves scalloping the shore, the constant, eternal rhythm that soothes me, allows me to see the ebb and flow in my own life, to recognize when I am resisting the onslaught of a tsunami or idling in a neap tide.

A dozen shell ridges fan out across the fossil in a design resonating with so many other images: shafts of sun plunging seaward from water-laden clouds; furrows ploughed into a field awaiting seeds of another harvest; veins of an alder leaf translucent against the August sun. These patterns join me in spirit with the fossil and every manifestation of its archetypal blueprint.

How can I not feel related to this ancient animal, seeing in it my own fingers splayed, reaching upward in joy?

CONTEMPLATIONS

• What in nature speaks to you of immortality?
• What archetypal images stir your soul?
• If you believe in it, and if you have a choice, what would you like to return as?
• What else do you see in the pattern of emanating rays?

Hold other mineral allies here.

Not a rock hound—I don’t spend time in deserts with a pick digging for geodes. Though I do find the odd rock on mountain trips or along river beds, the vast majority of my rock allies come to me on beaches.

I used to hoard rocks. Once in my 30s, I corralled some friends to help me move. At one point some of the men grumbled about the weight of ten or so extra heavy boxes and said to me: “Yikes, what do you have in here, rocks?” I was afraid to tell them they were correct, for fear they’d refuse to carry them up the long flight of stairs. Most of those early finds have long since been returned to a fine shore.

I still have a large collection though, subdivided into many unusual categories. This is one of them: exclamation points. Of course I didn’t set out to look for punctuation marks, but once I’d found a few of them, many others followed. Once you create a neural pathway in your brain that is sensitized to a certain shape, you start to see it everywhere. In journalism, these marks are called screamers and are frowned upon by most serious writers in all but truly exclamatory situations, as in: “Egads, the dog ate the whole cake!” (A regrettable occurrence at a birthday party I once gave.) Despite their limited usefulness in writing, exclamation points do remind me to aim for the extraordinary whenever appropriate.

I gather my stony exclamation points around my writing area to set a goal, to inspire me to attempt the unusual—and to notice the extraordinary all around me. So next time you’re on a beach or beside a river, look around for your own exclamation points. Here are a few entries from my journal that earned screamers:

The sky above the bay is peppered with hundreds of crows frolicking in a windstorm, while beneath them, the bay is salted with white caps. Tangy!

So many shades of green now, so many variations on chartreuse charging the landscape with excited renewal. As the days lengthen, my mind expands to receive more light, my energy rises and my outlook gladdens—ah spring!

I send my heart out to swoop over the bay with a swallow and once again know the thrill ride of love. Together we arc and loop into the blank blueness, then dive and defy gravity—simply pure joy!

There are several whip trees in the woods next to my house, 200-foot tall firs with branches only near the tops. They bend in dramatic arcs during high wind, spinning off ever more of their fringe. But on a still night, as I gaze up through them to the milky way, they are black silhouettes dimly etched against the deep blue dome. At first glance, they look like palm trees delicately swaying in a mere whisper of a breeze. Ah the northern tropics!

CONTEMPLATIONS

• What things in your natural environment deserve screamers?
• What is remarkable about you and your life?
• How will you be amazing today?

Study other mineral allies here.

Hearts made of shell and stone and wood, hearts I find in my rambles on beaches and forests here on the Olympic Peninsula. I’ve been collecting them for decades, so that now my eyes spot something heart-shaped almost daily. It still amazes me that such an interesting shape is so common in nature. Sometimes, I’m even tempted to see certain heart-shaped finds as omens.

you have my heart, click to enlarge

It’s an odd thing for a recluse to collect, isn’t it?

You’d be forgiven for assuming it symbolizes some lingering longing for human connection. I really don’t believe it does. My true loves are my dog, the moon and the Earth Herself. I choose to believe that each heart shape I spot in the natural world is a valentine from the Earth to me. My found hearts range in size from itsy bitsy to rocks too large to lug home, and sometimes they even take fleeting shape in the sky.

I’m not the only collector of hearts…watch this brief video to see heart-shaped things as seen from Google Earth!

VIDEO

CONTEMPLATIONS

• What aspects of the natural world inspire feelings of love in you?
• Are there animals in your life that you love? What have you done for them lately?
• How do you express your love of the earth?
• What more can you pledge to do for the love of our planet?

I found a wonderful blog that features all things heart rocks….find it here. It has all sorts of lovely images and inspiring stories contributed by readers.

OFFERING

The heart rock photo from this post is available in various forms (including the poster here) and on several different products in my CafePress shop. See all my beachy designs here.

A subtle pastel sky lures me outside, but it’s cold, with a light breeze off the Strait. Like a heliotrope that barely knows which way to turn, I set off on an afternoon walk to lift my face toward the scant sunlight and say goodbye to the year. Thanks to the tugging of the young moon setting dimly in the west, the beach is extra wide. Thin bands of clouds hover over the islands and the mountains, centering me in the famous blue hole. Of course I’m alone on the beach. With the temperature in the low 40s, the day doesn’t shout: Come on down to the beach—except to me. Cold never kept me from anything.

Besides, winter beachcombing often rewards me with some of my best prizes. The first item I pick up is a white, heart-shaped shell fragment about an inch long. I can’t tell what kind of animal it used to house—the sea has worn away it’s original form and redesigned it as a heart—an iconic outline I often notice nestled among sticks and stones. Since I collect organic heart-shaped things, I add it to my pocket and begin a meditation on its possible meaning.

Could it be an omen for my year ahead?
Or a nudge to be more loving toward myself—or others?
Or is there some part of my heart I have lost and now found?
But that’s the thing about omens—they can only be proved in retrospect.

The water is quite calm today—no sign of the big logs I saw bouncing along yesterday, carrying full loads of gulls out for a thrill ride. Next I find a perfect crescent shell, the top of one of my favorites, the bivalve jingle shell. (So named because of their delightful sound when clinked together, jingle shells are often used as wind chimes.) And not far off, I see the shimmering bottom half, with a hole worn away in the center. (Which I actually like, as it makes it easier to string onto my deer fence.)

a whole jingle shell with a complete lid; click to enlarge

But when I reach into my pocket to add them, I realize there’s a hole in the bottom—and my found heart is now lost. It feels vaguely important to reclaim it, to carry this small heart home with me as an article of hope. Or proof. Or desire. I retrace my footprints in the firm sand but cannot find it again.

Several gulls are bobbing in the gentle surf, crying out as I near them. I screech back a greeting in my best gullspeak. One rises up from the water and flaps her wings in response.

I feel such a bond with all gulls.

Just this morning, I was delighted by a flock of thirty or so wheeling in a tight bunch at the edge of the bluff, hollering, diving and all frothed up over something. Perhaps one of the resident eagles paused in a hemlock to sun herself. The gulls and crows love to gang up on the eagles and harass them—probably just protecting their nesting areas.

meditation on joy: flock of seagulls whee-ing; click to enlarge

A bright red tanker inches along the Strait toward port. The crew will be happy to be in town for New Year’s Eve, especially since alcohol is now forbidden on such ships. I say a prayer for the safe passage of this and all tankers that ply these waters—nearly 5,000 trips a year through here. Tankers that are full to the brim with crude oil. It would take just one Valdez to ruin these pristine beaches for a very long time. I don’t like the odds.

There are lots of large, colorful stones exposed today near the tideline. As I poke among them with my driftwood walking stick, I spot the pock-marked outside of a half-buried giant rock scallop. I uncover it and shake off the sand. It’s the largest, heaviest one I’ve ever found, nearly an inch thick in places and weighing about a pound. What I love most about it, is the bright purple color of the hinge area where it was once attached to its other half. Tucked into a hollow is a tiny dark limpet. The shell further reveals its age by the several dozen small barnacles attached to the inside. About seven inches long, it just fits into my huge hand.

a sacred vessel: a very old rock scallop shell; click to enlarge

It is symbolic to me, to find this big sturdy scoop of a shell on the cusp of a new year. A solid vessel, it’s fully capable of containing all sorts of things. It reminds me that I, too, am a vessel—for joy, for new experiences and challenges, for fresh ideas and insights, for whatever the new year brings to live in my shell. I open to it all.

The sun is sending its last glimmers onto the water before slipping behind the mountains—and it’s only 3:30. These are fragile days on the 48th parallel. I’ve lost whole—but brief—afternoons engrossed in a book, and when I looked up it was already dark. I tighten my muffler around my neck and turn toward home, glad to have the wind at my back.

How interesting that I end my year on this beach collecting shell halves—solitary survivors of bivalve beginnings. Alone, but not incomplete, they retain an enduring beauty.

I, too, am alone but not incomplete.

It’s rare to find an intact bivalve on the beach, because the hinge that holds them together—whether clam, scallop, mussel or oyster—is always soft, flexible flesh. Susceptible to tearing and rupture, as if the two halves were never destined to live out their lives together. Of course, some would say the shells died when the creature that created them ceased to be. But to me, the shells are still very much alive, and will go on surviving long after I’ve blended my bones back into the earth. Sure, the more fragile jingle shells will be ground into sand by steady tides. But the rock scallop shell—already old for its kind—must be hearty enough to persist at least a century or so.

CONTEMPLATIONS

• Can you see yourself as a vessel?
• What would you like to hold?
• Is your vessel large enough to contain all the goodness the Universe wants to give you?
• Have you found a vessel in nature that you could use as a meditation focal object?

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