Over time, I’ve learned that creative solutions never emerge from diligence and determination alone. Rather, the key to solving any problem is establishing the right mentality. But my mind is often uncooperative, thoughts like seagulls running wild through the beaches of consciousness. And while it may be possible for me to track down each one with only my bare hands, stone-skipping is the wind that brings all of my wandering thoughts in the same direction.
Ocean stone skipping is much more intricate than its pond skipping brother. You can find rocks of all shapes, from the smooth elliptical blues that bounce merrily across the tides to the behemoth, L-shaped browns that drag the water behind them and are prone to sudden sharp turns. The throw is critical as well: a sharp fling angled down too far will send its subject sailing high into the air before crashing back down to the murky depths, while a flatly hurled pebble gently glides across the sea. Throwing into an oncoming wave is almost doomed for failure, but I’ve seen stones surf the tides and climb up the arc of the wave. Traveling through treacherous tides, a pebble’s path is uncertain till its end.
It is an amusing thought, that even the modern man can be reduced to throwing pebbles at 139 million cubic miles of water. Yet there is a remarkable resemblance to life itself. Every journey is but a stone flying through the air; even when it expects to fall and sink, a wonder of physics keeps it afloat. The path it takes is not calm and flat, but filled with bumps and turns it never sees coming. Even after it’s swallowed by the sea, a journey never dies. It might venture back to the beach to be thrown again, or be swallowed by the waves, becoming the sand that sticks to my toes when I walk on the shore again.