Tap Tap Tap (sound of hammer and chisel)

I’m cutting stone from the top of my scaffold overlooking palms over the Alabama Gulf coast. It’s a 120 year old Opera house that I’m working on. I’m working classical columns and decorative architectural detail. I’m semi retired. I love my work.

If I get off early I will swim in the gulf tonight and watch the sun go down – such a bold and colourful event to see it sink into the ocean. I like to swim nude so I have to be selective about where I go as I don’t want to offend anyone. I’m fortunate in this respect as my restoration work gives me access to beach areas that are off limits to the general public. The beaches here are gorgeous with white crystal sand and live oaks and lawns coming right down to the ocean. At sunset where I will go swim is off an early civil war fort that is technically a ruin. I am a masonry conservator so I’m lucky as I have legal access to such sites. Swimming nude is a type of freedom few people will get.

I remember Georgia O’Keefe liked to swim nude with Stieglitz; she understood. So I’m with Georgia I’ll take my dinner with me. It will be take-outs of steamed royal red shrimp and blue claw crab; with a side of red beans and yellow creole rice. I’ll eat and watch the sun go down with a bottle of Pellegrino (water) and, with luck, watch the moon rise over the gulf.

Next week there will be a full moon lunar eclipse (just before the Findhorn 60th birthday). As both Pluto and Uranus are both at play, it’s not expected to be dull. So hold on to your hats folks, we are in for a ride, as the shifts that are taking place are of (and in) the 3-d themselves. This is neither good nor bad in these shifts; no one escapes where and when they show up, as its all about your inner growth level on how you handle it. If you are fear based they can be quite frightening and challenging yet it all depends on where you’re at with your self-growth and where your attachments are.

The fire at Findhorn is a case in point and a fair example of the shifts I’m speaking of. On one level the fire was devastating and emotionally upsetting. Yet down the road, 2-3 years on there were changes that we all made (shifts) that resulted from our collective experience. People shifted from bricks and mortar to online classrooms not only at Findhorn but in big cities and worldwide something that was thought impossible ten years ago.

Spiritually we learned more about what our mission is and what our true work is. These are growth shifts. We also intuitively read where our blocks are and discovered new pathways within us using new innovative ways of self-discovery to drop what doesn’t serve us and embraced the inner tools that make our life flow. Was it comfortable? Most likely not …. but in the long run we can begin to see new beginning in our freedoms where to grow and look for opportunities as to where our true work is. It’s a process and there are no measuring sticks who gets it early and who gets it late. Ours is to assist everyone.

Here on my scaffold overlooking the Gulf I am reminded of my stonework at Findhorn, now many scaffolds ago ..my Findhorn scaffold was set up behind the hall at the rear door portal …From its top I could see the whole of the Sutherland coast and that of Caithness rise in a wild steep climb from the cobalt purple swirl of the Moray Firth. The views from here were majestic and Zen like. Not unlike the meditative wood block prints of Mount Fuji by the masters Hiroshige and Hokusai showing the steep hillsides in shades of royal Tibetan blue and their peaks capped in glistening snow that necklaced across the baby blue sky like shimmering pearls.

The springtime air is fresh and fragrant in briny essences of seaweed; driftwood and the perfumes of heather and gorse whose blooms intoxicate the senses and make the nostrils flare like that of a young colt. The heady mixture makes the spirit giddy like a sailor on a Saturday night whose drinks are free as he dances atop the bar to the tune of a horn pipe. My chisel works the cut line of a new stone from top to bottom. Every stone here at the hall gets a new face so its line can meet the stone below and beside it. You expose the beauty in new stone. Beauty transforms us; and since every stone here tells a story of when the Earth was formed we feel connection to it ….

We want to know more so here then is my story.

At Findhorn I would quarry my own stone. The quarry is quite ancient. It’s in Hopeman. along the coast and it is on a cliff that overlooks the sea and surrounded by wildflowers. It is an open pit quarry in which the stone is quite near the surface. In those days the protocol for quarrying this stone was just to show up and take what you needed and then pay for it at a nearby house when you collected it. I lived and worked stone at Findhorn from 1976 -1983. I also worked in the apothecary with Taras as an herbalist and healer. I quarried mostly in the warm months, where on Saturday I would load up all my quarry tools in the trunk of my 58 English ford Julia that I had purchased from Loren. These tools usually consisted of the heavy ledge tools of big and small spitting hammers and large and small lifting bars (rip jacks) to pry stone loose from rock face. I also brought picks and stone axes that are necessary for such work.
Sometimes a guest asked to go with me. I would often oblige as where we go is really beautiful. One spirited Dutch woman with hazel eyes approached me wanting to go. She was good hearted and of jovial spirit but spoke little English. She was stout and well-proportioned with flaxen hair and fair skin that was almost porcelain as that of a doll. She was unafraid of the work…. so I gave it a go.

I picked her up at Cluny on a gorgeous Saturday morning and we headed out. The ride is wonderful; we drive with the windows down letting the wind blow our hair and the strong coastal sun to percolate and dapple our skin and arms as we pass farms with their young spring calves. She is very becoming in her repose at the passenger seat. She has athletic legs that blush rouge as the movement of wind rustles her blouse and linen shorts upon her fair skin. Since language is an issue, we forgo any attempt at small talk and embrace the shared beauty of the countryside in silence. She reminds me of a young woman from a Van Eyck or Vermeer painting with broad hips and ample girth and breast capable of the work at hand.
We shall see. Life is such an adventure.

After passing Duffus castle we arrive at the quarry and unload all our tools which we walk directly into the pit . . I demonstrate the sequence of the work speaking French which we both have some experience in and point out what goes where and when. She is a quick study and picks right up on it. Then after a basic safety lesson (in French no less) we begin the work of opening up split lines in the rock face. Then prying out the ledge rock that is suitable for the hall. T’s at the hall where I will cut to size and given a new face to match the others.

Little did I realize at the time this would lead me to a career that would take me all over the world; meet my wife; raise a daughter and semi-retire to a 65 acre horse farm.

We worked in tandem like this in the silence and beauty of overlooking the ocean there at Hopeman. Our heads were just above the surface level of the quarry so we could always see blue sky and ocean when we looked up. Around mid-morning the day had heated up pretty good and without thinking I removed my work shirt and worked bare chested. Then to my astonishment she did exactly the same. Suddenly I experienced a shift. We were in this timeless halidom. It didn’t matter what century it was, we were two quarry masons, two spirit beings, toiling together in the tribal palaeolithic or in any millennium of history or literature ……We carried on working in tandem like this driving our work bars into the quarry face; prying it loose where we could .and stacking the inventory for later pick up.

There often is a Deja Vue working in stone like this. Stone tells a story of when the earth was formed and we are greatly attracted to it, we are, should we allow it; spirit beings whose third eye is connected directly to the heart. The heart that has no judgement or criticism but sees its potential in the flow in as above and so below.

Toiling like this our skin was turning ruddy red and streaked with stone dust and sweat; and by the noon hour we had acquired enough inventory to take a leisurely lunch by the beach. We took the footrail to the beach and discovered that we had the entire beach to ourselves. It’s a cove really with some large flat rocks that extend out into the ocean. The rocks were warm and smooth to the touch and by the time we ventured out to their end it was an automatic invitation to strip down naked as children and step off into the frolic of the ocean. The water, even at this time of year, is what they call fresh (cold).
We both had screams of joy and politely held onto one another for warmth; thus began the washing of stone dust off one another while letting the waves slap and buffet our reddened backsides. We then found a place to climb back up onto our great rocks and let their warm smooth surface bake the warmed wetness from our backs as the oceans water cumulated in tiny beads of suffused diamonds upon our arms and unruly hair. We lay there letting a million years transcend the moment. Was it Deja Vue? Were we lovers? Were we Picts? …. Arm in arm, our bodies wet and entwined, we chose beauty and shared in the beauty and bliss of a timeless afternoon.

Thank you, Findhorn, and happy 60th birthday. We love you, Monocle

Michael Davidson