Stacking Stones

Hours after the sky has grown dark, I like to walk with my dog down through the woods and onto the dry creek bed. I let her loose to run along the smooth layer of limestone the absent stream has laid open to the sky. I walk on this strange pavement, missing a step where it undulates or splashing where it holds pockets of rainwater, and my attention all the while is fixed to the large stones that stand alone in the middle of it. These stones have an air of mystery about them, sitting out there as if deliberately placed. I mean, I know the water set them there, but even so the sense of mystery remains. They please me, and I can't leave them be.

So under the cover of night I stack them. Almost every night, yes, I stack stones. Am I mad? Well, yeah. But I love their heft and their smoothness. I love especially the deep knock and quiet rasp of stone being placed on stone. I admit I also like playing the wood sprite who sets up strange sights for the morning amblers.

Tonight was an especially good night for stacking stones. The sky was clear, the moon was bright, and the local screech owl (who often turns my fun into a ghost story) was elsewhere. It was just me, the dog, the moon, and the crickets.

Archaeologists wonder why the Celts (or someone before them) stood their stones on end so many millennia ago, but I don't.

If I only knew how to carve...