More Than a Rock Shop

This fall, Dixie Treichel from KFAI came by the shop for MinneCulture’s 10,000 Fresh Voices series. We walked around the store, talked about rocks, and Sophia and Owen Marciano shared a few words too. Here’s what we talked about.

The scientist in me

As I was learning about the properties of stones metaphysically, the scientist in me was curious about the geology of them. Why is this one this color? Why does this one let light through? And what I was surprised to learn is that the metaphysical properties and the physical properties go hand in hand.

Picking agates

I started collecting rocks by picking agates, which is something that someone I was dating was teaching me how to do. And it was such a mindful practice, walking along the road or especially the river. I grew up along the Mississippi River.

When you’re picking agates, it’s like they glow. They’ve got a different texture than the other rocks, and sometimes they’re translucent. They’ll let some light in. So it’s like you’re walking down the gravel road and you see a cinnamon red hot or a little bite of licorice. Sometimes they’re real sparkly.

A lot of the picking that I do is actually outside of Little Falls, Minnesota, by Fort Ripley. But being able to slow down and do that just about anywhere became such a great hobby for me.

The inspiration station

When you come in the front of the store and turn to the right, you’ll see our community board with different events and classes. And you’ll see our inspiration station, a glass case that’s filled with rocks and bones and dried mushrooms and seashells.

We’ve got a horse skull, which is one of the most noted items when people come and visit the shop. Her name is Little Dipper, and she came from my partner’s [family] property in St. Francis. [Little Dipper] gets a lot of attention in South Minneapolis and a lot of questions about her. And that’s one of the things that I feel these items do. They connect me to the spirit of something that is timeless.

Where we started

Sophia, our manager:

“I helped start this with Brenna. We both were part of the same bookstore many years ago. And when the old owner retired, Brenna bought the business and I started alongside them. So for years it was just the two of us, and now we’ve been able to expand.”

The people who make it a community

Owen Marciano, owner of Nonna Terra, reads tarot and sells his work at MoonStone:

“I love the opportunity to read tarot here and to offer some of the spiritual and sacred objects that I make. I feel really supported as an independent artist by MoonStone and the folks who run it. They’ve been a dream to work with.”

Why labradorite is one of my favorites

One of my favorite types of stones that we carry in the store is labradorite. Labradorite is within the feldspar family. Quartz is one family of stones, and feldspars are another. It’s German for field stone. Moonstone is a feldspar.

What a lot of these stones are really notable for is that light comes into the stone at one angle and then comes out of the stone at a different angle. And that creates this really incredible effect of reflection and different colors. You really want to move the stone around, or move around the stone, to see its different layers.

It interested me very much to learn about the science behind the stones and how that maps onto the ways different cultures and practices have used those stones. And that they are consistent, to me, speaks to some sort of higher truth to them.

If you want to hear more about how MoonStone started, our donation weekends, and what it means to run a queer-owned shop, read Abundance Gets More Abundance, from my first conversation with Dixie on Fresh Fruit.

Thanks to Dixie Treichel and KFAI’s MinneCulture. Listen to the full story here, and see what’s coming up at the shop on our events calendar.

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