to our grandchildren, it was so harsh, it was so difficult. Every day a challenge. Look at the newspaper, Covid infections run amok, out-of-control wildfires, people who had clearly lost all of their political marbles. Violence in prisons, larcenous gangs performing break and snatch routines in luxury stores.
Was it really that bad, grandmother?
Well, yes. And no.
For every one of these bad things there were people who performed miracles to make them better.
I passed a painted stone left with some others on an old concrete pump structure as I hiked south along the Old Croton Aqueduct trail. They’d been there a long time. I never paid much mind before.
There is something about leaving a stone – on a grave, as a visitation stone, a commemoration; or a cairn, a waymarker, to help the next hiker along; or stacked in a Zen garden, where the placement of a stone is an effort to bring order out of chaos.
Just leaving a stone, but somehow it’s moving at the close of 2021.
Let’s welcome 2022 with grace, intelligence and love. Hope. Show our grandchildren that we attempted to place a stone along the way.
Jean Zimmerman 
Thanks! Jean
Several times a month I walk on the south going aqueduct path and check those stones.
I always assumed it was a gaggle of 8 or 9 year old girls who paint those stones
on regular basis but this one is very elaborate. Nice photo.