Petrified Rainbow Wood, A Stone of Transformation

So often, when we talk about crystal lore, we repeat the same few basic facts. The stone is found here. It grows in this sort of crystal habit. You can identify it by this or that characteristic — its hardness, its depth of color, the way it cleaves when it breaks. The ancient crystal shaman used it for healing, for love, for wealth, and here is how the modern worker may do the same.

Solid information as far as it goes. But today’s meditation on Petrified Wood is more personal than that, for it begins with a dream.

The Gift of the Ghost Bird

A hotel breakfast buffet. More people than I would have expected. Teacup in hand, I go into the next room. The lobby proper. Velvet couches.

A large painted wrought-iron birdcage. Large as a walk-in closet, the door open to let the residents come and go as they wish. I sit in the gold couch opposite.

The teacup is bone china with painted roses on it. An irritating thing. Too delicate. I don’t drink from it, I put it down.

Sheldon, my little old man of a Peach-Fronted Conure, emerges from the open cage. He climbs down slowly, slowly, with much effort. At thirty — almost thirty-one — he’s the equivalent of a human in his nineties. Although I’ve advertised across the country and across the world for years, I’m aware of only a few others of his species to ever reach that age.

But the effort isn’t all age and arthritis. Some of it’s the stone he carries in his beak. An uncut pebble of Petrified Wood. Arizona Rainbow Wood, I’ve heard it called. Once the trunk of a living tree, time has replaced each living cell with stone — in this case, colorful agates of red and yellow.

As I watch Sheldon’s progress, a man approaches me, although he does not sit. He looks down at me. Over at the bird. A question.

“Sheldon is a Peach-Fronted Conure,” I say. “He is almost thirty-one.”

“I’m sorry,” says the man. This seems an odd comment. On the verge of rude.

A large-screen television flickers on the wall some distance behind me. He looks there now, and I turn to look too. We are all concerned about the weather. This is Australia, I think. We are all on a tour, although I wouldn’t normally go on a tour with so many people. There must be a rare bird or maybe it’s a conference.

The sound is turned down. You have to lean in to hear the voice. All of Australia west of Probst is being evacuated, or has been evacuated, but if you’re somehow still there, go now.

I don’t know where Probst is. Or if it’s even real. I only know how to spell it because I can read it on the emergency warning card that keeps appearing on the TV screen.

An ellipsis.

A very large window. I think at first it’s glass, but maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s just open.

Out there it’s bright, hard, sunny. From here inside the lobby, you cannot see the ground.

Sheldon flies in that direction. It’s easy, for he has dropped the rock into my pocket. He doesn’t even have to flap.

At the window’s ledge, he opens his wings, and up he goes, drifting up slowly, in lazy circles, a balloon riding an invisible thermal updraft.

I open my arms, and I’m right behind him.

Now we are two balloons, him a little ahead of me.

Ahead of us, we see a couple of — well, what are they — flying Zodiacs? Inflatable rafts of some kind that have taken to the air. We are still too far beneath them to see more than the occasional heads of the sky dwellers looking down, without impatience, to see when we’ll arrive.

Arizona Rainbow Wood at the Rainbow Bridge

I wake suddenly. Once awake, the man’s comment isn’t rude or odd in the slightest. Sheldon, my beautiful but very old and fragile Peach-Fronted Conure, went over the rainbow bridge on January 29, 2021. We were together at the end — me, Sheldon, and his plushie, his snuggle-buddy after his mate of many years passed away at age twenty-seven. He was sleeping, dreaming from the way he snuggled deeper, and then he wasn’t breathing anymore.

I have spent half my life with this bird. How do words express what I feel? How do words express anything?

How do words decode this final message?

It is easy to say, well, Petrified Wood is the symbol of eternal life.

Easy to look in Wikipedia and discover Probst is not a city but the name of a man who was on a show called, Survivor.

Easy to say nothing dies. It is only transformed.

Easy to say, it was a simple message of, “This is not goodbye. This is, ‘We will all meet again.’”

Well.

There is also an actual stone. A week or so before the dream, as I inventoried a rock table, I discovered a small piece of uncut Arizona Rainbow Wood. I was thinking of cutting it to match two I cut years ago — the two polished Rainbow Wood pieces in the photograph at the stop of this story.

I do not know if I will ever cut it now, or if I will leave as it is in quiet memory. Perhaps the stone will convey what words cannot. Perhaps the stone can say, “Listen! Petrified Wood is proof, not wish, that Earth has a memory.”

Most dreams fade but this one lingers — the sight of Sheldon flying without flapping, as he could never do in life. I see him now, spinning up and up, but slowly, as he waits for me to catch up. There is no hurry.

I’m a long-time crystal worker and stone cutter, as well as the author of The Moldavite Message. If you enjoyed this story, I'd be delighted if you let me know by hitting that <3 button. Tips gratefully accepted.