Patapsco River Rock Building

EC_Bridge_by_Christopher_Busta-Peck_400x230

The Ellicott City Bridge
photo by Christopher Busta-Peck (2007)

Maryland’s Historic Bridge connecting
Ellicott City in Howard County with the Town of Oella in Baltimore County (see map ↓ )

Some practitioners call it Rock Balancing. Some call it the ancient art (or Zen) of Stone Stacking, while others call it cairn or dolmen constructing. Often remote & anonymous, these simple stone-on-stone sculptures speak to us like microcosmic written stories (bookmarks). We can read them as locators (breadcrumbs), places of ritual, icons, dancing spirit beings, calendrical circles, lightning rods, forts, falling stars, or other things — from distant times & places, other cultures & languages. And, we can build them ourselves in our own place & time, in our own image. It’s really all part of the same thing.

Buddha’s	Stones
↑ Click on the images ↑

And yet, each iteration expresses something new & unique, too. It’s an object of divine beauty or comedy or ch’i or abstraction that never quite existed before, and may never again.

Teddy Betts (1956 – 2010)
Master River Rock Builder
Photo by Doug Retzler

It’s where the modern age meets the stone age — a balancing point, a fragile, pivotal moment in the river of time. Here in Maryland’s Patapsco valley, we call it River Rock Building — because that’s what Teddy called it. Teddy Betts was a devoted River Rock Builder, like no other.

(page under construction)

Wish you were here

Do you have rocks in your head? So do we! Join us on Saturday, the 13th of July, 2013 for the 3rd official Patapsco River Rock Building. We’ll be gathering underneath the arches of the beautiful & historic Ellicott City Bridge in Maryland. The folks here at Nature Art in the Park are still uh, balancing our schedules, but we hope to keep the rockworks up for a full week this year (barring another 100-year flood). Note that 7/13/2013 is also this year’s big day for Paint It! Ellicott City Plein Air Painting, sponsored by HoCo Arts, so there will be lots to see in town — for all ages & artistic temperaments. Watch this space for updates: www.RockBuilding.org