Perhaps I should begin documenting the stones I haul.
That has the potential to smell of trophie hunting, which I do not like. They aren’t trophies, though I listened to a story today that turned them in to one. Apparently it’s fairly common across the world for lifting stones to be something of a coming-of-age ritual. Boys do it to become men. It’s still a thing in Scandinavia, my old therapist said it was popular in the Balkans, but it is currently dead in Ireland.
Stone lifting in the rest of the world focuses primarily on monumental stones. If you can lift them off the ground you’re a man, if you can lift them to your chest you’re a hero, if you can lift it over your head you’re a legend, that sort of thing.
I’ve considered making it almost required to haul a stone of heft out of the forest to be accepted here, but that seems...difficult. Perhaps it’s more realistic to make a game of it: an array of challenge stones. I personally like the difficulty of carrying them barefoot up a slippery mud-hill rather than simply lifting them up, but perhaps there can be both. I’ll build an obstacle course.
The former also is prone to injury as the wounds on my feet and the bruise on my thigh can attest. Mishima might say I have the body of a matador from the waist down, though my shoulders are looking fairly roughed up at this point, too. I’m considering wearing some simple shoes while I carry stones, my feet are too beaten up at this point and I’d prefer a continuation of the exercise to a really pure form of it.
Folks seem to understand the elegance and the beauty and the humanity of moving rocks: