Stories From a Stone

by Maria LoBiondo

“In the beginning, there were no stories.”

That’s how I begin the “Storytelling Stone,” the Native American origin tale of how people began to tell stories. An orphan named Gah-ka, ridiculed by his tribe, goes off on his own and makes camp by a huge stone that looks like a human face. Leaning against the stone, he is startled by the question, “Do you want to hear a story?”

Of course he does, even though he doesn’t know what a story is. But he listens well and becomes the first storyteller, revered by a new tribe he comes to know and with whom he shares this new thing called “story” that he has heard from the Storytelling Stone.

The Stone speaks only in the winter, when there are no crops to care for and the nights are long. We are in a psychological winter during this coronavirus crisis, even if there are daffodils blooming outside the door. 

If there are positives to be found in this new normal, one may be slowing us down from our normally hectic paces. Stories slow us down, too, take us to a time out of time, absorb us in a different reality for the space of the telling.

Within that time we accept the impossible – that stones can speak, for example. And when we slow down we may find that in fact stones can speak, if we listen.

Stones were the theme of the February evening Luray and I spent with about 20 students from kindergarten through high school with Joys, Hopes, and Dreams at the Arts Council of Princeton, a program associated with HomeFront. The inspiration that night came from “Stone,” a Charles Simic poem Luray recites as a story.

We told several stone stories, a Nasruddin story of pushing a great stone; Skunny Wundy outsmarting the Stone Giant in a skipping stone contest, and the Storytelling Stone, in which Gah-ka has a pouch with objects to represent the different stories he has learned from the Stone.

These led up to the Simic poem. As Luray spoke it, we all listened intently, and then she repeated the beginning of the lines and – with only one hearing and no copy of the words to refer to – individuals, unprompted, called out the remaining words, just as Gah-ka listened so deeply to the Storytelling Stone that he was able to repeat all he heard.

Then Luray laid out stones she had collected and asked each participant to choose one and listen to what the stone said to him or her, just as Gah-ka had objects from his pouch to remind him of stories. From these stones, and “pouches” drawn on paper, new stories were formed.

One youngster drew a memory of rolling down a hill with a friend. Another drew the dog she wished someday to own. 

At the conclusion of the Native American tale, the Stone tells Gah-ka that the stories will no longer be kept in the stones but will live in the people. And the stories do, and will, as long as we share them. They can be triggered by an heirloom piece of jewelry, a photograph or letter, a favorite recipe, a remembrance of a special event. The humblest of materials — even a stone — can inspire a story .

Primary resource for the Storytelling Stone: a Seneca tale retold by Joseph Bruchac in Return of the Sun: Native American Tales from the Northeast Woodlands.

Stone, by Charles Simic: https://t54poets.weebly.com/blog/stone-by-charles-simic