"The Language of Stones"

I didn’t pick any up. I just watched them, and let them watch me.

The girl and the stones

When the tide recedes in Baja California Sur, it’s not just the sea that withdraws — a hidden story emerges.

I walked this morning along a beach near El Tecolote. The wet sand shimmered like shattered glass, and on it, the stones — silent, enduring — told an ancient tale. Each one seemed to whisper: “I was here when no one was looking.”

There’s a kind of silence that only happens when the wind barely touches the water’s surface. A vast silence, where you can hear your own breath more clearly, more deeply. In that silence, the stones speak.

A mother told her daughter that stones "don’t feel." The girl stroked them like sleeping pets. Then she asked, “Then why are they sad?” No one answered. But the question lingered, like a seagull suspended midair.

The stones witness everything that unfolds by the sea: promises of love, wildfires on the news, tourists returning each year without knowing why, fishermen greeting the sun like an old friend.

In Baja, each stone is a syllable of a story we don’t yet understand. A story that doesn’t need speed or noise — just presence. They’re not here to be collected, but to be heard.

I didn’t pick any up. I just watched them, and let them watch me.

Sometimes, when everything feels too fast, all it takes is listening to the language of stones to remember there’s another way to live. Slower. Truer.

— Sebastián del Mar