I drove down Route 22 to the Hillsdale Diner to have breakfast with my good friend and editor Rosemary Ahern, I am so lucky to have her as a friend (and an editor.) We talked about finishing up my book “Talking To Animals,” which is due in September and is five chapters from being finished.

On the way back I passed a lawn full of stone art, bounders and rockets painted with statues of dogs, birds and frogs glued onto them. Startling folk art, I pulled over to take a photo. The artist came out and walked by me, but did not speak to me or answer me, there must have been a couple of hundred stone sculptures out on the lawn, they ranged in price from $30 to $45. I think I will buy one next time as a present for Maria.

The art was unusual, large stones painted in different colors, all kinds of animal statues – dogs, cats, birds, frogs – attached them in still more colors.

I think Maria would have loved one. Like me, she always celebrates the creative spark in anyone, this kind of art is genuine, individualistic. I want to go back and take more photos as well. The human spirit is an amazing thing, the creative spark is in all of us, it comes out in all kinds of ways. It needs to live.

There was something mystical to me about this artist, living in a trailer in a tiny upstate New York town, driven to create dozens of stone sculptures, mixing different forms to make his own kind of art. In the Kabbalah, God tells human beings that he has given each of them the creative spark, and that the only thing he has to fear from them is not using it or acknowledging it.

I thought he was brave, I thought he was driven, I imagine he loves his life and his work, but that, I suppose, is  a projection.

The act of individual creation is sacred, it lives everywhere.