I live in a National Forest in Montana and have spent the last fifteen years walking alone in the wilderness with my dog as my only companion. It has been the best time of my life. I have observed many things that have caused me to see the world and my connection to it in a different light. I have come to find that many of the Native American beliefs regarding nature and spirituality are very much in alignment with my own. I believe in the sun and the moon and the stars. I believe in the eagle, the owl, and the bear. I believe in the spirituality of all of The Creators creatures. I believe that life itself is the Great Teacher and that we may very well need to return more than once before our lessons are learned. Yet, with all this believing, I believed rocks were simply pretty things.
A little over a year ago my best chum took me to a rock shop in Bigfork, Montana Kehoe's Agate Shop. I just went along because it was something she wanted to do. I think this must be one of the better rock shops because I was swept away by some of the truly amazing stones and crystals. They had stones from the size of your thumbnail to crystal geodes four or five feet tall.
I'm a real sucker for natural designs. In my former incarnation I specialized in photographing what I call Still Life in Nature under the moniker Kinsey Barnard. It wasn't hard for me to fall in love with some of the stones I saw in the shop. I ended up buying a rock that had designs in it that were too intriguing to pass up. It's called a Sepatarian Slab. I had absolutely no intention of starting a rock collection. I just thought the rock was beautiful and I wanted it in my space. It's been sitting on my entertainment console ever since and I have enjoyed looking at it nearly every day since.
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| My Rock Collecting Begins (Septarian) |
Is that rock cool or what? The designs and colors are simply perfection, naturally.
This past October so got the bright idea to take my chum back to the Big Fork rock shop for her birthday and let her choose what lit her candle. She chose a gorgeous Amethyst crystal. Naturally, whilst she looked around for her present I look around for my joy. And darned if I didn't find it!and It was a beautiful Carnelian from Madagascar.
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| Rock #2 Carnelian from Madagascar |
I don't do much studio photography so I don't have the right equipment but I think this is good enough to get the idea across how beautiful it is. The strange thing was no matter how I tried I couldn't get the jagged bright white light in the center to disappear. It looks like a reflection but it's not. The rock is smooth and I totally blacked out the room. Yet, it's not there when you look at it with the naked eye. Is it some energy that can only be picked up by the camera? Anyway, I took my new stone home and placed it on the other side of the big screen. Now I had two beauties to look at everyday.
I now had two rocks so I guess you could say I had a collection. I started thinking I could get into collecting beautiful rocks.
In the next episode I get exposed to the idea that rocks may have more going on than just beauty.
©Walker Barnard
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