In the days of our 'legacy chain,' our dear @snook periodically created writing challenges which the community seemed to enjoy. She has done it again by creating this revived Hive Community Challenge. This week's challenge is for us to write about ROCKS. Yes, rocks, however you wish to interpret that! There have already been some posts written with the requested hashtag #hivecommunityactivity

I am almost embarrassed to show the humble pics in this post after seeing the astonishing rock painting done by @denmarkguy the other day. After reading this post, please go see the beautiful, striking designs he imparts to create his Alchemy Stones!

Several years ago, I took a nice long walk most every day, or every-other-day, at least. The walks were usually about 5–6 miles (8–10 km), but sometimes more /less, depending on how I felt. On those walks, I sometimes found pretty rocks beside the road. I'm not sure if they fell out of a truck that was hauling rocks, or how they got there, but they were all whitish, smooth river rocks (and it was quite a ways to the nearest river). One day, I was inspired to bring one home with me, and another the next day, and then another. Most of them were easily held in one hand, maybe the size of an apple or onion, or smaller. A few were larger, like the one in the photo, below, which required both hands and felt quite heavy after carrying it a couple miles home; but hey, that was a little more exercise, right...?!?!?

My husband had a very old, floor model, antique radio, the kind that people sat beside prior to television, so they could hear the daily news or an entertaining radio-play or music show. Not wanting to scratch the surface of the piece of furniture, I put a pretty cloth on top of it and began placing my rock collection there, with a couple of candle sticks and a painted gourd that someone gave us.

Then one day, I decided to try painting one of the rocks. This was back in the mid-2000s, before the whole phenomenon of "painted rocks" became such a craze as it seems to be today. On the largest rock (the one that took both hands to carry), I decided to paint a Celtic triskele pattern. I cleaned the rock first, to make sure there were no dirt particles that would interfere with the process, and I outlined the triskele with a pencil. I've never really considered myself an "artist," per se, but I loved to doodle & play with markers and colored pencils. So, I decided to use one of my permanent markers for this endeavor.

I was pleased with the results! Sometimes that rock just sits in the corner of the room, looking pretty, and sometimes it functions as a quite effective doorstop. 😁

Then I decided to get even more creative with some of the smaller rocks. I again outlined my concepts with a pencil and then used my colored markers to draw /paint the designs onto the rocks.

The rock on the left in the photo depicts the Goddess Bast from the religious traditions of ancient Egypt. I first read about Her in an encyclopedia about Egyptian life and religion when I was in college. The book was counted as a "reference" book in my college library, so I could only read it while in the library. I was so taken by the goddess with the head of a lioness that I took a piece of paper and very gently traced her image with a pencil so I did not ruin the book, itself. I still have that tracing today, over fifty years later, and used it as a guide to transfer Her onto the rock. I will write more about Her some day; in fact, I've had a whole Draft of a post about Bast in PEAKD for a couple years now, but haven't finished it for publishing (because so many ideas for posts, so little time! LOL). 😂

The second rock has a "fertility" style Goddess symbol on it. She is patterned after some of the finds in archaeological sites around the world where remnants of ancient civilizations can be found. (q.v.) Do a web search for Cucuteni, Catalhuyuk (Çatalhöyük), or Venus of Willendorf to begin a search down the rabbit hole of archaeology of ancient sites. 😉

And since it is said that every woman is a goddess, I wrote a reminder of that on the back of the stone.

The final stone of the trio, above, is a stylized OM symbol, which is sacred /special in my spiritual beliefs. Perhaps there will be more on that later, too, if/when I can get back to all those Drafts in PEAKD. 😆

I appreciate my readers for checking out my rocky post! 💗
Please consider writing your own post for ---> the challenge! <--- click to see it!
And you can click here ---> #hivecommunityactivity <--- to read submitted posts!