The day after Election Day, Angelique Vines Reagan was busy arranging colorful, little nuggets of hope, love and joy in Respect Park, a tiny pocket of art and greenery just off Main Street in Vancouver’s Uptown Village.
She’s hoping that anybody and everybody will join her effort to keep spirits rainbow-bright.
“It’s a wishing garden,” Reagan said. “I’m sure, post-election, we all have a few wishes we would like to make.”
Reagan is the founder of Vancouver Rocks!, an informal grass-roots group whose mission is childlike in its happy simplicity: Paint little stones in fun and pleasing ways. Hide them here and there around our landscape. Know that the people who discover these unexpected greetings by friendly strangers will smile.
“There’s so much negativity in the world,” Reagan said. “I thought this would be a great way to spread positivity.”
There’s an undeniably widespread hunger for just this sort of heartwarming whimsy. There were approximately 2,000 members of the Vancouver Rocks! Facebook group this summer; now there are nearly 30,000 — and they are a complete cross-section of Clark County’s population, including everyone from homeless families and suburban housewives to business executives and community leaders, such as Vancouver City Manager Eric Holmes and Mayor Tim Leavitt.
“I really wasn’t expecting any official people to get involved,” Reagan said.
But last month, Vancouver Rocks! went “official,” winning the city’s fourth annual Ryan Woods Grassroots Community Award, which recognizes positive, community-building efforts that originate with everyday people.
“I joined the group on Facebook a while back, mostly because I was curious,” Leavitt said during the award ceremony. “I didn’t expect what I found: Thousands of strangers connecting, engaging and inspiring one another. Thousands of people venturing out into our community to explore places they have never been.”
“It’s about one woman’s simple wish to spread joy,” Leavitt said. “She threw an idea out into the universe via social media, and her hopes weren’t just realized, they were magnified. Thousands of times over. On any given day, you will find literally hundreds of posts … art and wisdom and genuine kindness shared among complete strangers.”
Everybody rocks
The real theme of Vancouver Rocks! is that all are welcome, Reagan said. It costs virtually nothing, aside from a little paint and some big-hearted willingness to leave your masterpiece behind for someone else to find and enjoy — and then hide again or take home if they wish.
That’s all there is to it. There’s nothing commercial about it, and Reagan wants it to stay that way; her only real requests of participants is that money stay entirely out of it — and that rock hunters post photos of their fun finds on the group’s Facebook page.
Some finished rocks show gleeful splatters; others display every level of artistic talent and effort. Scroll through that busy Facebook page and you’ll find many meticulous designs: lotus flowers, penguins, pine trees, ladybugs, butterflies, Disney characters, family pets, American flags, the Washington State University Cougars logo, Pokemon and peace signs — to name just a few.
And, of course, many words of love, faith and affirmation. “Life is good.” “I love you.” “Everything is going to be OK.”
“I’m not artistic and I have terrible handwriting. But today I’ll be hiding 24 hours worth of painting therapy rocks,” a group member posted Nov. 9.
A woman who said she’s struggling to quit smoking posted a photo of a rock bearing a beautiful rainbow fish and the caption, “Smoke fish, not cigs.”
“Ok my dear friends I need your help. I am quitting smoking,” she wrote. “I got this rock on Friday, and it has truly been my rock!”
Tara Lindemann, who describes herself as a crafter, really gets into decorating, hiding and hunting for rocks. It’s like enjoying a citywide, never-ending Easter egg hunt, she said.
She likes to do careful designs and logos, she said. She was really gratified when somebody posted that her Trail Blazers logo rock had been discovered by a man who mailed it to his sister in Texas, a Blazers fan who’d had to move away.
Lindemann doesn’t have children, but knowing that her rocks provide nice surprises for kids makes her feel like one, she said. “I’m 32 years old, and I get so excited about this,” she said.
A sad start
Reagan, who has worked as a night-shift nurse at PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center in Vancouver for 11 years, said two things inspired her creation of Vancouver Rocks!: a growing rock-painting trend in Gray’s Harbor, where she used to live; and, the death of her oldest child, Hayden, at age 7.
“I was going through a really hard time, and this was a nice distraction,” she said. Reagan pointed out that a simultaneous, sister effort called “Love Rocks” started in Forest Grove, Ore., inspired by two girls who were struck and killed by a car in front of their home while they were playing in pile of leaves in 2013. Their distraught mother decided to continue the family hobby of affixing fabric hearts to smooth river stones; “Love Rocks” have now spread around the globe.
“They are doing the same thing, leaving a little love for people,” Reagan said. “And it was started by another mother who had a loss.”
Now, Reagan regularly paints happy rocks with her two daughters, 3-year-old Kaili and 5-year-old Ava, while she considers their future.
“We all have a lot of wishing to do,” she said. “I’m hoping we will fill this space up with thousands of wishes.”
