SPELLING LOVE RIGHT

Spelling love is not about the alphabet.

If you know your ABC’s, spelling love is easy.

And we all know out ABC’s just fine by now.

The alphabet isn’t like algebra or anything else in school that made you wonder why you needed it so bad it made the curriculum.

Spelling love with an algebraic formula, quadratic equation, or algorithm won’t cut it.

Some math wizards might explain the beauty of the numbers and swoon over the elegance, but they won’t spell love.

Before you break your brain trying to expand the letters l, o, v, e, look at a bigger picture first.

How do you spell love when you walk in the forest or camp in the wild?

It starts with taking only pictures and leaving only footprints. In other words a lovely outdoor adventure isn’t a scavenger hunt.

Do you really need a slab of granite from Yosemite? Those rocks from a quarry in the English moors?

Why take them?

Rocks are rocks. You’ll find them at the local rock shop.

They have all the rocks you’re looking for and save the trouble of packing heavy stones in you bag.

But you don’t listen to good advice and pack that Yosemite granite, you ship stones from the moors.

And you do it with love.

The awe you felt driving out of that Yosemite tunnel with Half Dome opposite El Capitan is in that granite now in your front yard.

Instead of hanging onto the cable and dragging up the slope on the backside of Half Dome, or climbing El Capitan at night with a headlamp, you’ve got the rock.

Put your Yosemite granite in the middle of the yard and hop over it a few times and you’re part of a bigger picture. You’ve joined the adventure class.

Sort of. You can’t do that with a photograph.

Spelling love with rocks is heavy.

The stone quarries in the English moors is a different challenge, if you’re up to it.

Bringing those rocks home means doing something important with them, after all those are the quarries that furnished the materials used to build London before steel and glass took over.

Some English towns are built with architectural stone shipped from London after the steel and glass makeover.

Others got their stone locally, like the town of Corfe near Corfe Castle.

Why does the town look like it’s built from castle stone?

Oliver Cromwell provided the stone after his anti-royalty cannons pounded the castle to rubble for the owners royal loyalty. After that it was easy pickings.

It goes without saying Corfe Castle was huge, built on a massive scale.

Today you can’t take stones from the site.

You shouldn’t let your kids climb all over the rocks of the castle or pose in the cannon ball holes either.

If you do, expect the prim and proper visitors to remind you it’s a sacred ground, not a playground.

And stones from England represents a love for tradition and respect for the past.

Call it the magic of objects and their ability to carry the power of love. They might not say as much on Downton Abbey, but it’s there.

Call it a representational object when you point out stones you’ve snagged.

Call it tradition when you add another English stone to your garden wall.

Or call it love of the life you lead.

Spelling love isn’t the same as humming a few bars of Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall, but it’s close.

You can’t spell love without education, and material objects are a big part.

Look at your surroundings and point to something you like.

You can’t like it without spelling love.

The carved wood transom above a front door?

The curved place where wall and ceiling usually meet at a right angle?

The waved glass in an old multi-pane window?

Instead of simple choices, or finding easy solutions, a builder chose to spell love with his materials.

Ask them about love and they’ll explain it another way. But it’s love.

No matter the words they use, when you hear them they’re spelling love.

The feelings we carry about our world needs to spell love; they need to show caring and kindness.

If you’re spelling love any other way, you’ll fail the test of life.