Growing Through Stone

I've always been enchanted by flowers, plants, and trees that grow through stone.

Once when I was in Taos, I was struck by a stand of cowpen daisies growing up through cracks in the street. There was a whole community of them. Another time, friends gave me a framed photo from a trip to Greece, an olive tree had split a boulder and grew up through the middle of it.

"This reminds me of you," she said.

The tree was strong and healthy, in full leaf, producing fruit. Proud, against a bright blue sky. Leaves, a vivid spring green. The split boulder, part of the beauty of the whole.

Recently, I found a photo of a stand of violas growing up through cracks in concrete. They are flowering as if there is nothing strange about their circumstance. I wonder how they are being nourished so well, to bloom so beautifully.

It's mystery, of course.

I'm sure there are explanations and theories about why some people are able to be hardy and resilient in circumstances that don't seem to support life, who are able to blossom in the harshest landscapes. These flowers and plants and trees and people are teachers to us. They mirror something powerful about our possibility, something powerful even about our reality - especially when we're willing to entertain the possibility that even the soil in which we grow can be confounded by the tenacity of what, or who, is growing there.

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience. 

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.