ON THE ROCKS
We have a large stone in the yard. Actually it is a boulder. I know this
because I called my buddy Donny who owns a quarry and asked him what the
differences are among a stone, a rock, and a boulder. Here’s what he told me:
A stone is anything a man can pick up by himself. So the gravel in your driveway
probably qualifies, and most of your garden-variety fieldstones do too. Now, in
Ohio, rock is what stones are made of. However, if you're from the south, then
rocks are made of stone. But a boulder, he assured me, is always a boulder
anywhere you go. He described a boulder as any rock, which cannot be moved by a
single man under normal conditions. I asked Donny where he got his decidedly
low-tech definitions, and he said they were developed over years of dealing with
homeowners who ask him to find a big “rock” for their yard. “Now, you want
a rock, or a boulder?” Donny would ask. “A boulder I guess,” comes the
answer. “Not a stone, a boulder, right?”
“Yeah sure, a boulder.” Donny says these kinds of orders usually wind
up as a “about as a big as a” description as the final answer. So, now I
have a boulder. My neighbor asked me if I wanted a stone, then a few hours later
he pushed a boulder into my yard with his bulldozer. He pushed it about a mile
through his hay fields to get it hear, and it left quite a rut. Anyway, it’s
here now and isn’t likely to move again in my lifetime. I think it’s mostly
pink granite. It sparkles a bit, and looks like a large rounded ruby in the
yard. The other day I had some time to kill after I backed the tractor into my
boulder for about the fifteenth time and stalled out the motor, so I allowed
myself the opportunity to wonder what it is that folks see in boulders that
makes them want to put them out where others can see them, and back tractors
into them. I remembered driving through Wadsworth the other morning and noticing
that all the new housing developments had these big old barn stones out at he
their entrances, and many of the older homes had some kind of boulder out front
as well. So I called the proprietor of Keeney Sand and Gravel again. “No,
really Donny, what’s with the boulders, why do people want them in their yards
and along their drives?” He said, “I figure people like boulders because of
what they represent. Boulders aren’t much to look at really, but they have
stood the test of time, and suggest permanence, a strength, an eternal something
or other that people crave. Somehow, boulders make us feel a little less
mortal.” As I think on it, I’m sure most of us do want to be surrounded with
walls of something eternal and strong. Unfortunately, today’s pink granite
boulder is probably tomorrow’s pink granite tombstone. And while I appreciate
what my boulder represents, I put my hope of immortality in God, a rock that is
far larger, quarried for me at the beginning of time...and which can never be
moved.