The Wishing Rock
I decided since I love to write and love to paint that I should combine the two. My latest art piece is just that! It is already sold but if you want prints let me know before I mail it off! I have always been intrigued with folk stories, legends and lore. I decided to add that to this piece and allow my art to tell you it's own special story.
This is the story I wrote of the wishing rock. Here in North Carolina wishing wells are still very much a part of tradition, lore, superstition and whimsy. I personally love wishing wells and all the portents they are said to grant. My story is of a legendary wishing rock. I live off a tributary and it does run in a loop and if you are from here you know how the French Broad runs north just like the Nile. The French is the 3rd oldest river and I have written a story of what stories if that river could speak would say... Anyway here is my legend.
Every town has a wishing rock. Few know where it is and if they did fewer know what it does. Each mystical rock is different in nature. Each wishing rock has a different size, a different feeling to it. The similarities are that each wishing rock can be found on a creek bend that is formed by a loop from a larger tributary. Each rock always sits in open to the sun, the moon, the wind and the rain. Each rock always is a perch overlooking a swimming hole and is a spot for many reflections.
Wishing rocks become places during the Spring where flowers bloom on its banks. Moss covered stairs are always found to walk your way up to its seat. It’s alive with flutters of butterflies and dragonflies.
In the summer it’s a best kept fishing hole kept secret to pinky fingered spitted swears. Campfire rings that glow at night are all tossed back into the river as if it all never happened by day. No one wants to share this secret place.
In Autumn the lover’s hold hands and bath under it in moonlit waters. Their laughter echos off the giant perch and follow on down the river only to form a chorus as it loops into time. The rock hears all for every thing that is ever said, whispered, whistled or even sung finds it’s way back again.
In Winter is the lament. The patient crane and the crickets have all gone. There is little songs for the winds to carry up to wishing rock. It is at this coldest time of the year that sorrow of remembrance is entrusted to the ancient stone. It is always in the darkest, coldest hours that the rock reverberates the end of the seasons timeless wishes.
Most that find their way to this magical rock never learn of it’s real power. The river knows and understands as do the birches and the brambles that bounce every word back into an eddy. The rock understands all of those who seek it’s wisdom and gives you the answers so honestly. Everyone’s pure confessions are all the same as the float amid the splashes and whirlpools eternal.
Legend say you have to hold a jar of lightening bugs and sit quiet during a full moon. You have to listen and you have to listen with everything that you are. The problem is no one ever takes the time to sit and hear all the symphony ballad of truth then they hear not just themselves but others too and what they wished for.
Everyone who visits there wishes for what is not theirs. Everyone who sits there wishes for things either gone, never was or what could have been. Everyone wishes the whole while never realizing what they have in the here and now.
We cannot remake yesterday, that is but a reflection.
We can not make choices for another and wish it to be so that is but a chasm that the rock never allows to float down the river bend.
The magic is always in the heart and it is why this rock is so powerful.
The magic is that every soul that whimpered, that whispered, that laughed or just sighed to it has been heard.
The magic is in love there is always truth and in love there is always an everlasting song to be heard.
In everyone’s heart there will forever be forget-me-nots, weeping willows, and bluebirds songs to triumph.
In everyone’s home town you must find a wishing rock and let it all out.
On a wishing rock if you simply say thank you for all you wished for and gained then for once your wish spins up to the stars. In a blinding light the stars reflect all that you have reflected up to them and scatters it back down into tiny glitter tears on that magic rock. It is a precious rock for a reason. Try it and pass the legend on.
