Rock stars: Ephrata-Soap Lake group adds a little splash of color to their towns

For a few years before the pandemic locked everyone inside, anyone walking in the Ephrata or Soap Lake areas might have seen a flash of color on the ground or resting in a tree knot as they passed by.

Someone with a few spare seconds to stop and look would have seen a stone, usually a small, smooth riverstone, painted with flowers or cartoon characters, or maybe a sunlit landscape, or else perhaps a geometric pattern.

Though some of the people behind the painted rocks have put on the brakes during the pandemic lockdowns, they’ll start showing up again as soon as those restrictions are over, said Sam Miller, an Ephrata resident and a founder of the Ephrata-Soap Lake Rocks group. Until then, she’s going to keep painting.

“Rock painting is good for the soul,” Miller said.

Miller, a resident of Ephrata who worked for five years at the local Methodist church but has “retired three times now,” started painting rocks three years ago when her husband’s health began to fade.

She became his full-time caregiver and wasn’t able to leave the house much, but she found that painting rocks, and later teaching others how to do the same, was a good creative and social outlet. Everyone who came to her house, and sometimes the neighbor kids running by, would paint a few rocks of their own before leaving them out for others to find.

“I love to paint and I’m very creative,” Miller said. “And I love people and I wanted something that would be fun for kids that wouldn’t be expensive, because a lot of the kids who live in Soap Lake are lower income.”

As the story goes, the movement began with a woman named Megan Murphy who lost her parents in her 20s and searched for objects on the beach that reminded her of her mom and dad. One day, she decided to leave a few objects of her own, writing a few simple messages on palm-sized rocks and leaving them on the beach for others to find.

A friend later messaged her with a picture of a rock she had found on the beach with a few words of encouragement. Today, rock painters encourage those who find their little works of art to post photos and tell the artist and others in the community, Miller said.

In only a few short years, the movement has become a nationwide phenomenon not unlike geocaching, where anyone of any age can create a small object for others to seek out and find.

“It’s kind of exciting, especially for the kids,” Miller said. “It’s like a perpetual Easter egg hunt; it’s exciting for them to find them — and it’s exciting for adults to find them too!”

There are as many ways to paint a rock as there are to paint a canvas, including many that are accessible for young children, such as by using a rub-off tattoo or by making an imprint with a napkin pattern, Miller said. But it can also be a medium for more adept artists, she added.

“There are some amazing people in our group,” Miller said. “I’m a fan of the ‘Peanuts’ cartoon. One of the gals that lives in Soap Lake, she painted a Thanksgiving rock with the Peanuts on it, with Snoopy and Charlie Brown. It blew me away.”

Of the many rocks that Miller’s painted, her personal favorite is of a horse and her foal, which was painted with hundreds of small dots.

She had been getting together with other members of her group in her church’s basement to paint and socialize, though she doesn’t think it would be possible with current social distancing guidelines. The same restrictions have stopped her classes on techniques to paint rocks, which she held about once every season and which drew up to 30 people.

But she’s looking forward to being able to resume all of the group’s activities, and encourages people who might be interested in taking part to go to the Ephrata-Soap Lake Rocks Facebook page, where members share photos of the rocks they’ve found and plan communal events.

Emry Dinman can be reached via email at [email protected].