yldann

I tried to find a picture of this interest, but it has thus far eluded me. Nobody seems to wish to take a picture of bare, brown, dry ground upon which some of the pebbles are tiny crystals, glinting in the sunlight. The crystal shown at the left is spectacular, but is not at all what I'm thinking of. I only included it because it showed a crystal, and I'm sure it would glint if it was on the ground in the sun instead of in a crystal cave. However, it is way bigger than the tiny pebble I'm envisioning.

I was socially awkward in school around people, but rocks had a way of putting me entirely at ease ;). In any case, I've liked rocks from a young age. When I was a child in Greece, while all the other kids were playing during recess, I would go off to one side of the lot and begin searching the ground. Every so often, I would spot something flashing in the sunlight, and could be seen picking something up.

The terrain in Greece is very rocky and has a lot of quartz crystal, some of it clear. The telltale flash in the sun would indicate that I'd found one of the little clear pebbles, which I would then collect. I never kept any of them. The object of the game was to see how many I could find and then I'd put them all back. I found this to be much more fun than ball or jumprope or other conventional competitive sports that involved interacting with people. None of the teachers objected at all to my eccentricity. I don't believe they even noticed.

When I played this "Game", I wasn't even competing with myself, really. I wouldn't record the score, or try to beat it later. Yesterday's handful may have been more or less than today's - it didn't matter. I'd admire them and show them to others who would admire them, and sometimes they'd show the ones they found to me. It wasn't a pastime that took all our time -- but it was there.

There was something about the quality of the sunlight in that part of the world -- it seemed brighter and more golden, and the sky often seemed to be a deeper blue than the sky we see here. The little bits of crystal would flash in the sunlight, and their tiny flashes could be seen easily from across the street. It's one of the things I miss about living in a drier, more rocky part of the world. Although the ground was brown and dry, if you looked a little more closely, the browns of the dust and rocks would resolve into a multitude of colors. Each pebble on the ground was a slightly different shade of dusty green or brown or brick or even bluish. The best kind, though were the clear ones -- those were the prize.

Now that I don't live in the rocky places any more, I make up for it by going on walks in the woods and picking up pretty crystalline rocks I find. There are usually many of them by the creekbeds, and sometimes little beaches form consisting of tiny pebbles. I never find clear ones, though... For that reason, I also buy rocks at the store, which somehow seems a little odd, in the same way that buying water seems odd. Perhaps there still exist places on earth where crystals are everywhere on the dry, dusty ground, and the rocks and the water are free...

Edit: This is humorous. I'm editing this from the perspective of May 2009. When I wrote this, I did not live in the rocky places anymore. Now I do. And guess what.... There are crystals here. I can dig in the garden and find a crystal! It is fantastic. I see glinting on the ground once again.