I am rock happy.

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.

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