The Stone Mother at Pyramid Lake: Legends and Folklore
Pyramid Lake sits in northwestern Nevada, north of Lake Tahoe. It is clear and deep, blue in some places and turquoise in others. It is surrounded by tufa rock formations, created long ago by calcium carbonate that settled out of the lake water. It is home to many birds and some really big fish.
Today, the land surrounding the lake is mostly desert, but tens of thousands of years ago, it was covered by the water of Lake Lahontan. At its fullest, Lake Lahontan covered over 8,500 square miles, plunging to a depth of 900 feet in the place where Pyramid Lake remains. Most of Lake Lahontan evaporated as the climate warmed, and Pyramid Lake is its largest remnant.
People have lived along the lake for thousands of years, but there is one resident in particular you should know—the Stone Mother. Do you want to meet her? Let me tell you her story as I heard it, from the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, whose tribal land encircles the lake.
Long ago, the mother of all mothers had four young children, two boys and two girls. She and her husband lived happily with the small children, teaching them how to live well and rightly in the world. But as the children grew, they began to quarrel. The mother tried to help her children resolve their differences, but the more they grew, the more they quarreled. She counseled them, pled with them, and eventually admonished that they must get along if they were to all live together. But the quarreling continued.
One day the mother realized that her children could not live together in peace, so she gathered them before her and sent them away. She sent two of the children north, the other two south. She told them to light a fire each night, to signal that they were well as they journeyed to find new homes. The children set out, two north and two south, and she waited and watched for their fires.
On the first night, she looked to the south and saw a fire, rejoicing that two of her children were well. But when she looked to the north, she saw no fire. She watched and waited, but saw only darkness in the northern sky. On the second night, she looked to the south and saw a fire, but the northern sky was barren. She watched and waited, but no fire appeared. On the third night, she looked again to the south and saw a fire, but once more, there was no fire to the north. She watched and waited through the night, but the sky remained dark, unbroken by any flame of hope.
On the morning of the fourth day, she started to cry. She cried and cried, inconsolable as only a mother with lost children can be. Her heart grew colder with every tear that fell, until it grew so cold that she turned to stone sitting next to her pool of tears that we now call Pyramid Lake. Here the Stone Mother remains, sitting beside her basket in the place where she watched and waited for her children’s fires. What remains of her grief stretches eight miles wide and nearly thirty miles long. It is over 350 feet deep and contains more than 7 trillion gallons of water.
Do you doubt that a mother’s tears could run so freely, her grief so deeply? I don’t doubt it. In fact, I believe the Stone Mother still cries, even though her stone eyes shed no tears. She has many reasons to cry, for if she is the mother of mothers, aren’t we all her children? Haven’t we all taken the life she gives and given no assurances in return? Haven’t we been hateful to each other, coming together in strife instead of kinship? Haven’t we forgotten how to live well and rightly in the world? Wouldn’t any mother cry?
I arrived at Pyramid Lake on a Friday afternoon and stayed until Monday morning. It was an amazing place to work on my next book, but the most amazing thing I witnessed was how dramatically life around the lake changed over the course of three days. Friday and Saturday, the shores were packed with campers. Boats and jet skis zoomed across the water, pulling skiers and tubes and rafts. People swam and paddled and floated and played. Engines roared, and music blared. Campfires and fireworks vanquished darkness. Food was grilled, drinks were poured, and laughter was shared by many late into the night.
Then on Sunday morning, the campers went home, leaving only a few tire tracks and trash they should have taken with them but didn’t. The spirit of the lake emerged, no longer encumbered by the turbulence we insist upon overlaying on the world. Waves lapped against the shore, and a damp morning breeze blew blissfully across my face. Rabbits hopped between bushes, and birds floated on the water and the wind.
I swam in the lake of the Stone Mother’s tears, moving through ribbons of cool and warm water that swirled together like conflicting emotions. I didn’t get to visit the Stone Mother, herself—the area has been closed to the public for years. But she had her own way of saying hello. As I immersed myself in the lake, a ray of sunshine broke through a cloudy sky and beamed down upon the place where the Stone Mother sits, bathing her in golden light I could see across the water.
When the sun set behind the mountains, bats began to playfully dart around me like butterflies of the night. Darkness enveloped the sky, interrupted only by a single bolt of lightning I saw to the east. I began to wonder—have I overlaid my own peace with chaos, or do the trappings of my life merely hide a lonely void where peace cannot reside?
I have a lifetime to ponder such things, but I had only one more night to spend at Pyramid Lake. So I deferred my questions, choosing instead to hear the lapping of the waves, to feel the cool evening breeze. Then, on the morning the fourth day, I left the Stone Mother to her vigil as she watches and waits for her children in the north to light their fire.