The Lost Art of Skipping Stones

You can tell a lot about a man by how he throws a stone.

Some try to muscle it. They huck it hard like they’re trying to make the lake flinch. Others flick it like a gambler tossing dice. A few get it just right. Low release. Flat angle. Clean spin. And when it hits the water, it skips. Once. Twice. Then again. Then again. For a second, it feels like the rules of the world are being bent by nothing more than intention.

I grew up skipping stones. Not as a hobby. Not as a sport. Just as something to do when you were near water and your hands weren't full. It wasn't special. It was just normal. Like climbing trees or fixing what was broken. And now? It’s almost gone. You don’t see people doing it. You don’t hear kids arguing over whose stone skipped further. You don’t find perfect flat rocks arranged on the shore, waiting for someone to pick the best one and throw.

Stone skipping is a lost art. A quiet one. And there aren’t many people left keeping it alive. But there’s one name worth knowing.

Kurt Steiner lives out in the woods of Pennsylvania, tucked away in a cabin he built himself. He doesn’t have a big platform or a flashy brand. He doesn’t care about going viral. He cares about precision. About silence. About craft. He holds the world record for most skips on a single throw. Eighty-eight. That throw happened back in 2013, and it still stands more than a decade later. Plenty have tried to beat it. None have come close.

He didn’t get there by chance. He got there by obsession. He’s cataloged thousands of stones. He trains like an athlete. Times his throws with weather patterns. Watches the water for the right stillness. For Steiner, this isn’t a party trick. It’s a lifelong discipline. A way of being. He once said his record throw was maybe eighty-five percent of what he’s capable of. That number tells you everything. He’s not chasing applause. He’s chasing something internal. Something clean and earned.

And that’s what makes it matter.

Most people today don’t understand that kind of obsession. We’ve traded patience for convenience. Mastery for distraction. Nobody wants to spend years perfecting how to throw a rock. But I’d argue that’s exactly why we need to.

Because skipping stones isn’t about the skips. It’s about paying attention. It’s about standing still long enough to feel the weight of the stone in your hand. About choosing the right one, not the first one. It’s about slowing down and lining up with something quieter than you. Something older than you. It’s about learning what it means to do one thing well, for no reason other than the doing of it.

We don’t get much of that anymore. Not in a world wired for speed and noise. Not when the currency of the day is outrage and instant reward. Skipping stones forces you to wait. To try. To fail. To try again. It teaches feel. Judgment. Timing. All the things we used to call wisdom, back when men passed it down instead of uploading it.

And that’s why it belongs here. In this Guild. Among men who are trying to remember how to live with their hands, with their senses, with their discipline intact. It’s not about becoming Kurt Steiner. It’s about becoming someone who gives a damn about the small things. The overlooked things. The things that remind us who we are when there’s no audience.

So next time you find yourself by a lake, or a river, or even a roadside ditch that’s holding water just long enough, pick up a stone. Turn it in your hand. Feel the shape of it. The weight. Throw it low. Throw it clean. And if it skips, good. If it doesn’t, better. Now you’ve got something to work on.

You can learn a lot about a man by how he throws a stone.