Charlotte MacDonald- Shrine

 I am really fortunate to not have lost any loved ones. But this made me at a loss for what to do for my shrine. I went out on a walk around W&L and stopped and some point. There I gathered three rocks and stacked them large to small. In doing that I reflected how it was a little reminder to those who pass that someone else had been there.

This stacking of rocks has been something that I have done since I was little. I loved taking walks and hikes on my farm and anywhere else. I don’t necessarily do this every walk, but every so often I will.

In doing this again at W&L I realized that this is what I wanted my shrine to be. It is always three stones that I find in the area I make the stack. I have always like the simplicity of it, how it comes from nature and that it doesn’t last. It is made for that moment and to exist until it is disturbed.

In making my shrine I decided that I would go out and find my stones and that they didn’t have to all come from the same place. This is the real difference between my shrine and the ones I commonly make on the side of a path. The first stone I found was the middle one. It is slate grey but has a slash of white at the end. This stone really inspired my search for the rest. I wanted the biggest stone, which rests on the bottom as the base to also be my base as my past. It is where I have come from and makes me who I am. The middle stone would then be my present, where I currently am. And the smallest will be my future. The middle stone is mostly slate grey so I chose the bottom stone to be a similar color. That represents that my past helps to define my present. The white is the future. It is a small part of my present so it exists, but it is not all of it. Then the future is entirely the white crystal because it is unknown and undefined.

This process was interesting because it has given a new meaning to something that I do and have always done. There was not a ton of meaning behind these three stone stacks before but now every time I build one it will be a little temporary shrine till it is disturbed.