My childhood is littered with road trips stops at rock formations, National Parks, state parks, or just short hikes. It seemed that we were constantly stopping to get outside, feel the earth, and remind ourselves the world was bigger than our Yukon.
My parents had carefully explained when I was younger that National Parks were protected areas of land, and we couldn't take things from them. National Parks were so beautiful, that if everyone decided to take something small, then it wouldn't be preserved.
This made complete sense to me because 1. I was (am) a rule follower) and 2. I mostly assumed that everyone had the natural desire to collect rocks wherever they went.
I started asking my parents whenever we stopped, "Is this is a national park?" If it was, I would release my fistful of rocks back to the ground, with a sigh of disappointment and deep resignation.
As I've gotten older, I started to take small pebbles, rules regardless. It still makes me laugh when I think about how disappointed I was, and mostly how I firmly believed that everyone wanted all of the cool rocks.
I went on a hike today, at the tipping point from day to night. Everything was existing a little more deeply, and the mountains glowed in the transition. The sky was a soft indigo, with hints of pink. I was hiking back (a little angrily to be honest), and I glanced up at the sky. My immediate thought was, "is this a national park?" I wanted to pluck a swatch of the sky and save it for another time.
Wouldn't that be lovely? To save it for another day? I thought about snapping a picture, but it wouldn't do the loveliness of that moment justice.
I have little collection of rocks scattered throughout my life, and I love them all. I have no idea where they are from, since most of the time, rocks look mostly like rocks. But I like the idea that they traveled the world before coming to me. And I like the idea of taking snippets of the sky and slipping it into my pocket, to be revisited at another time.
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