Cloudy is the Stuff of Stones

"Whenever I'm outside for more than ten minutes I start picking up rocks. In Patagonia, in Phoenix, in a Home Depot parking lot -- my gaze is invariably sucked downward into the gravel. I weigh the merits of pebbles by some fickle and mutable aesthetic and either pitch them back or pocket them and stack them among hundreds of their brethren on the counter behind our kitchen sink like fortifications against an army of tiny invaders. Pebbles from Canada, pebbles from Cleveland, pebbles from carriageways in Caledonia. Maybe the echoes of miners reverberate in my genes; maybe I share a Thats-Pretty-and-I-Want-It covetousness with thieves and princesses and bowerbirds. Maybe I hope someday I'll finally overcome the fundamental truth of pebbles and find one that looks prettier dry than wet. Or maybe I'm just an introvert, a down-gazer, a bad conversationalist. But every night as I wash another dish or fill another mug with water, my little hoard stares up at me with its thousand imperturbable faces. Oh, him, the stones seem to whisper. He'll be gone soon enough..." Novelist Anthony Doerr shares more in this meditation on time, mortality, impermanence and pebbles.

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