EXPANDING UNIVERSE: Create a Chat Room on Your Own Special Hilltop

by Carol Lynn Pearson

Receiving divine messages on mountaintops is nothing new, but I didn’t expect to find any atop the rolling hills near my own home in Walnut Creek, California. I received the first message last summer, as I hiked with a young man who had grown up as a gay boy in a polygamous family in Colorado City. Our conversation covered the huge challenges that situation created, and when we reached the top of the hill, I saw something I’d never seen in my many climbs to that spot: a word written in small rocks — “JOY.”

“Ah,” I said to my young friend, “a message! In whatever situation we find ourselves, there can be unexpected joy.”
Next time, I climbed the hill with my friend Rozan and found that “JOY” had been changed to “LOVE.” Rozan knelt down, rearranged the rocks, and turned “LOVE” into “PEACE.”

A few weeks later I climbed the hill with my brother Warren and his wife, Shweta. We saw that “PEACE” had become “GIVE” — until Warren decided to change “GIVE” into “RECEIVE.”

I was alone on my next climb; it was an overcast day, with fog and smoke from a fire in a nearby county. My diary reminds me: “No sun at all as I hiked. When I got to the top of the hills I found that there was a new word — ‘LIVE.’ As I stood there for a moment to appreciate it, for the first time all morning — and only for about 15 seconds — the sun came out, spilling light all over the ground. Live. Live in the sunlight. I shall.”

On my next climb, I saw that the little rocks were in disarray, so I arranged them into the word “YES”; then, some days later, into “HEAL.” The next week, I changed them into “THANKS.”

On another hike, my cousin Linda and I found, in new and larger rocks, the words “WE ARE STRONG.” Some days later, Rozan changed that phrase to “BE STILL.” And only a few days ago, my friend Gary and I ascended the hill to find that someone had made a large heart with the rocks, with a cross inside it.

Ah, such a great chat room we strangers have at the top of my hill. May angels take the messages of our little stones and scatter them across the world.