Surprise Messenger

Working on the rock wall has brought a few surprises. My connection with the rocks continues to grow. I sense and listen where one wants to be placed and when it has found its home. There is the learning curve on the ability to move a rock, one that is to big for any sane person to move, sometimes even up a hill, by rolling it day by day, till it arrives at it’s destination, that continues to amaze me. But Sunday a surprise came from an unexpected source. Early in the morning, as I was about to move an enormous rock, a clicking sound emerged from underneath an edge that was floating higher than the rest of the rock. Peering down the next thing I see is a very large beetle walking out from below. He’s still clicking which I interpret to mean: annoyance that he had to move. His dark brown coverings and three and half inch long size, gets my full attention. I’m mesmerized as I watched his gyro-scoping antenna’s explore the air in front of him and find a pathway to a new spot. Slowly he walks straight and surly to a rock about four feet away. I watch every movement and have the thought; “I may never see anything like this in the wild again. I think I’ve seen something like this at the Butterfly Pavilion.” It felt like the time I saw two snakes in the before, during and after sex act. Sheer amazement comes over you and you just know this is a ‘once in a lifetime’ event. The ancientness of its structure reminds me I am peering into a long forgotten, but well preserved, prehistoric past.

I have the thought “Maybe there is a message to this visit.” I continued working for the next couple of hours, checking on his whereabouts every now and then. He seemed to be settling into a spot. I built him a rock house with three rocks leaning against each other so he would be protected, from both me stepping on him, and kitty eating him. Later, as I came to work another shift, (shifts are essential as the weight and numbers of rocks I move challenge my strength) I realize I hadn’t looked up Scarab, which I decided my beetle friend must be.

The most notable words I found were; Sacred, Sun and Ra, along with the imagery of rolling the sun across the sky. This last piece originates from the fact that a Scarab actually does roll dung across the earth to bury it with its larvae so it will have plenty to eat as it hatches. A lot of symbolism, used in ancient Egyptian art and burials, feature this beetle. Somewhere in there is also the mention of resurrection, which would explain the burial connection. It was known for disappearing and reappearing. And my friend did disappear but not until after he spent the whole day under his rock house. I thought he might have come to die. But the next morning he was not to be found. I looked everywhere. A once in a lifetime surprise I surmise. But the thought of him rolling something across the earth couldn’t help but hit me as I have literally spent most of the last several weeks rolling rocks, too big to pick up, across the land. I smiled at the reflection my little messenger imparted. Nothing I could of guessed when seeing him for the first time would have prepared me for that knowledge. I thought I was the only crazy one rolling anything across the land. And here he emerges to teach me I’m in good company. And maybe some other things that are yet to resurrect.

Mary