What is it about rocks that lures me like a fraternity boy to a toga party? I tilt my head down, and immediately my eyes start searching for smooth ones and rough ones. Big ones and little ones. Black ones with brown stripes and white ones with green spots and those rare pale red ones. Flat ones and round ones and the real pretty ones. And the mighty ugly ones.

My love affair with rocks goes back to when I transitioned from Cub Scout to Boy Scout and went on my first camping trip.

Early on a Saturday morning, Ben Davis, the prematurely bald scoutmaster of Troop 30, loaded seven sleepy boys into his 1956 Buick Roadmaster, inserted the ignition key with a maestro’s flourish, brought the shiny green beast to life, and set out north on 277 from Texas to the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma.

As we drove onto the refuge, we saw buffaloes shuffling along through the prairie grass, thirty feet away from the right side doors of Ben’s car. “Stay in the car, boys. Buffaloes are unpredictable.” None of us argued that point. We drove on to our campsite, pitched our tents, and piled up wilderness mattresses of dried leaves to hold our sleeping bags. Then we downed a quick meal of canned fruit cocktail and Beanee Weenee, topped off with long gulps of water from brand new official BSA canteens. Ben circled his right hand high above his head, summoning us to assemble for a hike. “Let’s go gentlemen, times a wastin’.” Gravel crunched underfoot as Bob, Bobby, Mike, Louis, John, Milt, and I followed Ben across the parking area to a small game trail that quickly led to a meadow strewn with small lichen-covered rocks. Directly ahead, an up thrust of enormous barren boulders and giant slabs of pink granite waited for our knees and elbows and hiking boots. Ah, beautiful old pink granite and the treasures it deposited for my young hands to discover – crystal quartz, rose quartz, and milky quartz. I would find one rock that was entirely delightful and then uncover another that bested it. I loved the hunt. Stone beckoned me with beauty and silence. The hook was set.

During my alley rat phase, I came across something very interesting on one of my wanderings along the stinky passageway behind my parents’ house. I was accustomed to finding discarded Fortune magazines in one particular garbage can behind a house across the alley, four doors down, and I had quite innocently stumbled across a few things in other garbage cans up and down our alleyway that a thirteen-year-old boy was not supposed to talk about in polite company. On this grand day, I spied the top of a large white rock about ten inches in diameter poking out of the dirt in the alley right behind our house. Maybe the weight of a garbage truck full of neighborhood refuse, lumbering over that particular spot week-after-week, had finally summoned this particular stone to the surface. Treasure! I pulled it out of the ground and carried it into the backyard to hose it off. When all the dirt was gone, I saw an impression resembling what I now know to be a Chambered Nautilus. At that moment, I knew I was the owner of a pretty good-sized fossil of some kind. I asked my mom if I could give it to the geology department at Midwestern University, about a four mile drive from our house. She was good with that, and soon the fossil, my mom and I were on our way. I was sure the university would give me a hero’s welcome. After all, had anyone so generously given such a rare gift to the university’s geology department? Maybe the local newspaper would hear about this selfless act. Maybe my picture would be on the front page – Local Boy Donates Rare Fossil. My mother and I walked into one of the geology classrooms, where an elderly professor was busy working at his desk. I announced myself and my mom and presented my find. The professor examined one side of the fossil, then the other, and declared it to be an Ammonite. The old man thanked my mother and me, then turned, opened a large drawer, and deposited my precious rock alongside at least fifteen other Ammonites of like size. Oh well, so much for rarity and notoriety, but the memory of finding and ever so briefly possessing that once living creature from eons ago is still fresh. Did that ancient Ammonite fossil hold who, what, when, where, and why secrets from time past? I believe it did.

Aunt Velma worked as an executive secretary for the old Sinclair Oil and Refining Company, in Midland, Texas. When some of Sinclair’s geologists returned from their field explorations, they must have brought my aunt mementos of their travels, because when Velma died I inherited two cardboard boxes full of goodies. I found petrified wood with rough bark and visible growth rings, geodes of varying sizes, silicate rocks, many quartz rocks, and a slim brown rock holding the pristine fossil of two fern fronds. Long ago, who or what set foot on primal soil and walked among those ancient ferns and trees? Oh, the tales the rocks in those boxes could tell.

And now the story shifts to Washington State. My lovely wife and I made our first visit to the great Pacific Northwest shortly after my son and his family moved to Poulsbo. We made a day trip to Point No Point, where I was astonished at the sheer number of sizable beach rocks, each glacially ground and polished to beauty pageant perfection. While my family visited, waded, and noshed, I wandered up and down the beach gathering pocketfuls of smooth beauties. I think I hauled thirteen pounds of rocks back to Texas on that trip. One particular five-pounder attracted the suspicion of a TSA agent, who thought I was trying to sneak something radioactive through security. It was really nothing sinister, just a big brown and blue-green beauty that appeared to be mostly petrified wood. My all-time favorite from that trip is an oblong black stone. It looks as if an artisan took an engraving tool and etched an unknown language into the whole surface. I have examined that strange black rock many times with an 8-power photo loupe, searching for the message or messages that surely must be there. Nothing yet, but the quest will continue. The black lovely rests on my desk within easy reach.

I think rocks know stories. They keep mysteries. They were here at the beginning and saw it all. But now they are silent.

Luke the physician, an apostle of Jesus Christ, writes in his Gospel of a time when Jesus and his disciples were approaching the city of Jerusalem. The disciples ran ahead of Jesus and were excitedly telling a gathering crowd about all the miracles they had seen him do. Several Pharisees, the religious leaders of the day, were in the crowd. They had no desire to hear anything the disciples were saying, and they demanded that Jesus tell his disciples to shut up. The Messiah’s answer to them was, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”

Reliable knowledge from the most reliable source. Maybe not this day, maybe not this year, but a day will come when the rocks will have their say.