Wild stones of the Palm Springs desert

Now home from hiking in southern California, I am enjoying gazing at the wild stones of the Palm Springs desert that came back with me in my camera.  But what is a wild stone?  It is more than being natural or undisturbed I think.  It is the feeling of presence.  Of a self-organizing consciousness. What Stephen Herrod Buhner asks us to feel from all Nature in his brilliant new book "Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm."

Although this carved stone rabbit near the Santa Rosa Mountains Visitor Center is amazing for its human effort and clever manipulation, the stone itself doesn't feel present.  As if imposing a form from the outside changed the energy radiating from inside.

When the forces applied are water, sand and wind, the stone stays in dialog with its sculptor.

We humans are very good with our hands, and efforts made with our opposable thumbs are well received by us as art, yet what artist could outdo these forms embellished by dripping water,

or painted by eons of the patient layering of colors,

or fired in the crystal-forming kiln of magma deep with the earth?

To my thinking, "wild" means "intact." That an ensparkedness, a goodness of fit  shines through, and we feel we are in the presence of something with an intensity of knowing we cannot even imagine.  I have mentioned in several of my website posts that the teaching stories in my Journey Oracle card deck were given to me by a stone. The presence of the wild speaks--just not in English.