Rock-Flipping Day 2010 is September 12

Imagine you’re Godzilla, out for a stroll through the neighborhood. Curious about what the neighbors might be up to, you lift the roofs from their houses and peer inside — though to be honest, this isn’t always terribly illuminating, due to their lamentable penchant for scurrying back and forth in a state of panic, eventually remembering to grab the children and head for the exits. Still, it’s fun finding out who lives where and how funny-looking they all are. You’re careful to put each roof back, and try hard not to crush any of the soft, squirmy, grub-like inhabitants.

That’s kind of what International Rock-Flipping Day is like. Now four years old, this timeless holiday — celebrated this year on Grandparents’ Day — is fun for the whole family. Remember to wear gloves, watch for scorpions and poisonous snakes, and replace all rocks exactly the way you found them. Bring a camera, sketch pad or notebook and record your findings, then post the results to your blog and/or the official Rock-Flipping Day Flickr group. Any and all forms of documentation are welcome: still photos, video, sketches, prose, or poetry. Email your blog link to the coordinator, Susanna at Wanderin’ Weeta: wanderinweeta [at] gmail [dot] com.

You can flip more than one rock, but you should flip them on Sunday, Sept. 12 — unless this is a classroom exercise, in which case we’ll accept rock-flipping results from Friday or Monday. If you don’t have a blog, you can set one up in a couple minutes using the dead-simple Posterous or Tumblr platforms.

Susanna will compile and post a list of links, which participants will be encouraged to re-blog for maximum international rock-flipping camaraderie and link-love. If you’re a Twitterite, the canonical hash-tag is #rockflip. We encourage the sharing of links on Facebook, but would prefer IRFD posts to be fully public on the open web. For more information, read the official announcement at Wanderin’ Weeta.