GEODE: The Sand and The Rock Remembered?
We’ve all eased our eyes open in the morning and found those little bits of matter clinging to the edge. They are commonly known as “sand” from the “sandman” who has “entered” and deposited these specs unless of course you sleep with one eye open gripping your pillow tight (Metallica Rocks). Anyway we wake up with sand in our eyes and that started a train of thought leading here today. Did you ever wonder how many grains of sand get left in your eyes over the course of a lifetime? Me too…but we’ll talk about that later… First let’s look at where else we often find sand on our body. Well now that I think about trips to the beach and believing that this is generally a family blog, we’d better skip a description of where sand ends up although it’s fascinating how it might get there. Maybe we had better dial this back to memories of the first time we discovered where that sand can get to and for me those first memories seem to be tied to a state park lake near Burlington and Danville or Middletown called Lake Geode. It was a funky little beach on a lake dedicated to fishing and camping. There were boats for rent and a little snack shop or bait shop which in my case often turned out to be a snack shop for the bass and blue gils . Well in that shop on the counter there was almost always an actual “geode”. What’s that? Well a Geode is a rock or a rock formation that due to geological reasons became hollow enough in the middle so that a crystalline structure could over thousands and sometimes a million years could develop. These centers are just brilliant and beautiful things and you can still find a few geodes at the park today.
Now it seems to me that as I grow wiser many people are like Geodes…. They are hard on the outside and seem unremarkable for a long time. And then something comes along and they crack. Now instead of just crumbling they reveal what’s inside and we find that inside they are dynamic, shining, beautiful, and able to amaze the world. So does that mean we should want everyone to crack? Maybe not, however, maybe we should look carefully to find the brilliant features of people when they get their lives disturbed in radical ways. Maybe the best facets of their spirit will become evident if we accept their new form.
Okay back to the beach and the sand…. One of my favorite memories of Geode was a camping night when a couple of us long-haired freaky. People (about 16) years old) went down a side trail to the beach for a slightly illegal swim. We swam a while and then sat on the sand looking at the night sky. There were tons of stars in the sky and the age old question came to mind. Are there more grains of sand on earth than there are stars in the sky? Well there are 41, 900 or so grains of sand in a pound of sand. Yet, the science tells us that there are way more stars in the sky than grains of sand it’s just that we can’t see them all. I’ve always wondered how much other stuff that could amaze us and yet we can’t or won’t see it? Now the other day I was looking at a chemical formula for DSMO (you can look it up if you want)… and started thinking about things at an “atomic” level. My mind drifted back to the sand vs. stars thing and I added in the molecules concept to the contest. Well after a bit of research it became really evident that it wouldn’t take a whole Lake Geode full of H2O molecules to surpass the estimated. Number of stars and in fact after a rough calculation it would’ve probably only take about ten drops of water atoms to equal the stellar count. So there I cat in my memory thinking people may have inner beauty that I will never see, yet I’d better look for and be aware of. Also I thought. About what we count and what we use our numbers for. You see ten drops of water. In my swim trunks would be a large number of atoms and yet the thought of grains of sand in my trunks or a star up my backside would be far more disruptive. So what did my memories of Lake Geode teach me…. Well it’s important to look inside and that numbers are important to understand for what they are and for what you might want to use them to say.
I understand that right now you can’t swim at Geode….but someday you will be able to and when you can… think of the sand, the stars, and the water and enjoy the experiences possible in a little state park in Iowa.
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