Back in May I bought a house. It’s been nice getting settled in: fixing things up and making it my own.
A few weeks ago, I had an arborist and tree workers come. Brazilian pepper was growing along the back of the property, and it was growing over the cable and other accessory lines. I was worried a bad storm would cause the branches to break and whatever the heck gets carried along those lines to go out for my whole neighborhood.
Before 
To deal with the stumps, I borrowed a friend’s chainsaw. I got to work on the stump on the right in the above picture. You can’t see it, but it would be about even with where that worker on the right is. I thought that would be a good stump to practice my chainsawing, since it was a bit smaller than the rest. I gave it a go, and sort of got the hang of it.
At one point while using the chainsaw, I saw sparks. At first I thought I might have missed some of the metal fence, and the chainsaw hit that. Then I took a closer look.
See that egg-shaped thing right in the middle of the tree trunk in the picture above? It’s a rock. It’s a fucking rock. Smaller than an egg. But it’s a rock.
The rock was embedded in the trunk of the tree. It didn’t fall in while I was working. The rock was there, and the tree grew up all around it. The tree gave zero fucks that this rock was in its way. And vice versa, the rock was there. Doing its thing. Ultimately finding itself trapped by the Brazilian pepper growing all around it.
Too it’s weird to think that I chose to cut right there. I just happened to cut where I’d come across this rock.
I dug the rock out so it wouldn’t hurt the chainsaw.
I decided to keep it. I don’t know exactly what it’s story is, but I’m leaning towards one of persistence and resilience. About being true to yourself.
By itself it was a bit of a lackluster rock. White. Dirty. Even with scrubbing it stayed dirty. So I decided to paint it and keep it as a momento or reminder.
Nature is so amazing and weird.