I’ll have to admit something. I’m a country girl. Every summer my parents went back to their home in Arkansas where both sets of their parents lived on farms.
Probably not the kind of farms you imagine. No big farmhouses. Not sweeping panoramas. Not a lot of cattle roaming the pastures or row upon row of cotton crops.
They were dirt poor farmers, but I loved going there every year.
I loved walking down the dusty gravel roads to the muddy swamps, walking through the neighbor’s corn fields, and listening to the crickets at night.
When Glen Campbell recorded, “Southern Nights”, I was nostalgic with memories.
I didn’t love watching my grandmother wring a chicken’s neck though. Yuck!!! But I loved her fried chicken. I bawled for about two hours every time we left to come back to Michigan. I thought my heart would break.
My other grandmother lived way back in the woods. Next to their house there were a number of blackberry bushes. Blackberry bushes are loaded with thorns. But no matter how much I got bloodied up, those blackberries the size of a man’s thumb were just too tempting. They were worth every painful scratch. To this day I love blackberry cobbler.
This grandmother made something called chocolate cobbler which I now realize was nothing more than crispy strips of pie crust with a chocolate sauce made of Hershey’s cocoa, sugar, butter, and vanilla. Yum!
All of this is just to say “You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl”.
We were at “teeny, tiny, red cabin” last week and my husband took me to a few new spots overlooking rivers, gullies, and pastures. I’m always surprised there is new country to discover. We’ve two-tracked a lot of roads but keep finding unexplored terrain.
We walked along gravel roads picking up stones.
Did I tell you I love stones? There’s something about holding a beautiful stone in my hands that makes me feel, the best word?, “connected”. Connected to God, to the earth, to life eternal.
I’ve collected stones from everywhere I’ve traveled.
Do you realize that stones go back to the beginning of creation?
Here’s some pictures of my collection.
But the one below is really something. It’s round. I mean as round as a tennis ball. I’ve never seen a totally round stone. It’s about 4″ in circumference.
Are you wondering what is te difference between a rock and a stone? I found this inforation that might clarify the difference.
Characteristics of Rocks and Stones:
Size:
Rock: A rock is comparatively larger.
Stone: A stone is comparatively small.
Movability:
Rock: A rock is immovable.
Stone: A stone is movable
Material:
Rock: A rock can be either hard or soft.
Stone: A stone is usually hard solid.
There are numerous references to stone and rocks throughout scripture. There is something essentially eternal and about a stone. It implies strength and permanence.
I like visiting big cities and I lived in Chicago for a while before I was married. I did the whole young-woman-on-her-own-living-in the-big-city “thing” for a couple of years. I rode the “L” (elevated train), shopped the stores, visited the museums, etc.
But after walking those gravel roads last week, I realized I haven’t changed all that much. I’m my happiest when I’m walking gravel roads picking up stones.
God bless and I hope you have a good day.
