Ever since I shared the story of our family cabin burning to the ground, one question keeps coming up. (If you missed that story, you can read it here.)
“What happened to the rock board?”
Truthfully, I’ve thought about little else.
Over twenty-seven years beginning in 1999, we filled nearly four boards with four hundred and three rocks—four hundred and three distinct family adventures and experiences. Mount Everest. The Great Wall of China. Petra. Hundreds of places. Hundreds of experiences. Each stone held a story that shaped who we became.
When the fire came, I thought that story had ended.
It hadn’t.
As we’ve crossed the North Atlantic toward Iceland, my mind has been completely consumed with one question: How do we rebuild it?
What has unfolded has been exhilarating. We’ve systematically moved through decades of photographs, enlarging every image and carefully identifying each rock, its original location, and its date. Every board. Every row. Every column. Piece by piece, the story is coming back together.
Someone made a comment that perfectly captured what we’re doing.
“Treat it like an archaeological excavation.”
That is exactly what this has become.
When we return to the property, every original rock we can recover from the ashes will be carefully placed back into its original location. The rocks we cannot recover will be represented in the artwork itself as a statement of presence. A world-class artisan will create a permanent masterpiece from the burned remains of the board, with the surviving stones at its heart. Beneath this artwork, we will begin a new rock board, ready for the adventures yet to come.
Somewhere along the way, my sorrow completely disappeared.
It has been replaced by exuberance and delight.
I no longer want to recreate the original.
I want to create something even better.
A masterpiece born from the ashes.
A legacy our children and grandchildren will gather around, not to view rocks, but to remember the adventures, the faith, and the lives those stones held.
Today I find myself in Grundarfjörður, Iceland. Not the homeland of my ancestors, but the land of the fierce Vikings who sailed into impossible seas, embraced the cold, and built legends that still inspire us centuries later.
Standing here, I can feel a little of that spirit.
It makes me want to slay a dragon and grunt like a Viking.
My wife and I have already begun collecting again. The specifics of what we’re creating? I’ll share them with you in a future post. For now, what matters is this:
The next chapter of the Rock Board starts here.
Out of the ashes.
Not a replacement.
A resurrection.
With Clarity,
Rich Christiansen
The Calm the Chaos Podcast Is Finally Here
For a long time, I have felt prompted to do this. And this week, it is finally here.
Episode 1 of the Calm the Chaos Podcast is officially live. I decided that if I am going to ask my guests to open up about the hardest chapters of their lives, I needed to go first. So in this first episode, I share my own story. The DNA test that unraveled my identity at 53, the secret my father carried for decades, and the journey into the belly of the dragon that ultimately gave me the clarity and peace I had been chasing my entire life.
Each week, this podcast will bring you real conversations, practical frameworks, and tools you can actually use to navigate whatever you are pushing through, and find your own way from chaos into clarity.
New episodes will be coming to you weekly. I will keep posting them here in the newsletter.
Whenever you’re ready, here are some other ways I can help you:
The Free Values Blueprint Video Course – A step by step journey to help you clearly define your core values, create personal doctrine, and move from force into flow. This is the same process I have used for years with my face-to-face clients.
Calm the Chaos with Rich Christiansen Podcast– Weekly conversations with thought leaders and everyday people who have faced life’s hardest challenges and found their way through. Real stories, real tools, and frameworks to help you move from chaos into clarity.
Free Tools to help Calm the Chaos – Practical frameworks and tools designed to help you regain clarity, steadiness, and alignment in everyday life.
Legado Family– A framework and community centered on strengthening family systems, legacy, and generational integrity.
