The Bone of the Earth

There is a silence that belongs only to stone. It is not the silence of a room or a forest, but a stillness that has outlasted the wind and the salt. We walk across these surfaces as if we are the first to arrive, forgetting that the earth has been hardening its skin for an eternity. To stand on such ground is to feel the weight of one’s own shadow, a brief, dark interruption against the bleached expanse. We look for warmth in the blue, for the comfort of a horizon that promises a destination, but the stone offers no such mercy. It simply exists. It asks nothing of the tide. It does not wait for the sun to soften its edges. We are merely passing through a landscape that has no memory of our footprints. What remains when the light shifts and the blue turns to gray?

Marissa Tejada has taken this photograph titled A Beach of Snow White. It captures the quiet indifference of the stone against the sea. Does the rock feel the water, or is it already dreaming of the cold?