It is August in Maine. Might be dog days somewhere else, but it is the height of summer here.
At about 10:00 pm, in the late darkness of a Maine summer evening, I drive to Simpson’s Point.
Standing at the edge of the cement boat ramp, I draw stones from a paper shopping bag and, throw them, one-by-one, into the water of Middle Bay.
Rocks and stones have been my spiritual companions for more than 20 years. Ever since my meditation retreat at a Sufi retreat center in upstate New York. There, deep in the mysterious other world of meditation and retreat, I saw a diamond-shaped quartz rock sitting peacefully at edge of the forest surrounding our open-sided meditation platform.
Three feet tall, the quartz sat in solid silence, even elegance, and spoke out to me. For the next five days, when sitting meditation ended, I would sit on the forest floor touching, embracing my quartz companion, feeling its compassion, presence, depth, hearing its voice. I “found myself” there in a double sense. It was the first time I fell for a stone.
The late Spanish poet Antonio Machado wrote: “no hay camino; el camino se hace al andar.” There is no path; the path is made as you walked. That quartz stone was my first step on the route to my stone-throwing at Middle Bay.
When I returned from the meditation retreat to what we inaccurately call the “real world,” that rock love came with me. I decided to build a drystone retaining wall in my backyard. It would be twenty feet long, 30 inches high, and 24 inches deep. It would hold back dirt I planned to fill in on the sloping edge of the lawn. It would create an edge to the pebble walkway leading to the driveway. It had to be dry stone; the rocks needed to hold each other up, not depend on mortar.
As a beginner, I began by reading up on what other wall-builders recommended. Stone in the Garden, The Art and Craft of Stonescaping, In the Company of Stone.
I string, a level, and a strong piece of 1 X 6 to slide heavier rocks and topping stones up onto the wall. Chisels and a mallet to shape stones to fit. Gravel to lay under the wall as a bed for 20 feet of perforated PVC pipe, drawing moisture away from the wall itself, slowing the inevitable sinking and shifting as the wall adjusted to the ground and the seasons.
And stones. After several trips through rock and stone catalogues, I decided on Pennsylvania fieldstone. It came in different sizes and shapes; I was not interested in uniformity, even flatness, but variety, stones that would fit the changing needs as they emerged in the building.
I measured my space to estimate how many pallets of fieldstone I would need. At a quarry about 10 miles from the house several acres of Pennsylvania fieldstone waited expectantly.
I walked through the yard, feeling the stones, examining their shape, breadth, depth. I wanted a good mix of flatter wall stones, rounded ones to create spaces, topping stones broad enough to create a flat surface on the last course of the wall; rubble stones to put in the middle and at the back of the wall, filling in areas needing support. Later that week, the yard delivered my three pallets, occupying the entire driveway.
It took two years to build. Not just because I was had to work in the “real world,” but because, as I began to learn, stone set their own slow pace. They talk. Pebbles chattered a noisy cacophony as they dribbled around the PVC. “Don’t be unruly; just settle down,” I thought.
Then I began to lay the first course. Flat stones here, a solid base. Each one would peek slightly up above the ground level from the trench; its underside buried out of sight. The lessons of stone walling began there. Nothing on the pallet was perfectly square or rectangular or even perfectly flat; partial circles or rhomboids abounded. Edges wandered off in strange directions. A stone thick at one end was slender at the other. Flat stones would be thinner or thicker than the others, making a consistent, regular course on the wall impossible.
Stones don’t communicate quickly. Like tree voices they come slowly and deeply. I learned to watch and listen; the stones, I realized, would show me or tell me who came next. A triangular edge would tell me it wanted to lie against the slant of the one I had just placed. The match was never perfect; accepting imperfection was part of the lesson. Two thinner flat ones would compete for attention, then lie together in comfort.
After the first course was laid, the conversation grew rich and complex. Did every stone want to be as high as the first one? Impossible! Should they be the same width; again, impossible. How wide and how deep. Beside each other or nestled one behind the other? Set so they would overlap with the course below? Round or sharp-edged? If one edge bent upward, I would need, something small, to give it a solid footing underneath. Was something round speaking out, to give the wall irregular beauty and make it impossible to count the courses exactly.
The staring and listening was complex. One stone might whisper “maybe me.” I would pick it up and set it in place. If I had listened well, the voice would cry out “right!” Equally, if I had listened badly or looked too quickly, the stone would announce that it was wrong and ask to be put back on the pallet. Another look; another voice; we would try again. Or the stone might say, “I will do; just put a small support on my lower right side; that’s good.”
Each setting of stone created a new situation. Something new needed to emerge; the space was now changed. The permutations multiplied as the wall rose. As the poet suggested, the stones and I were creating something that only came into existence as we created it.
Impatient, I would sometimes try to force the pace of this dialogue, try to control progress, demand that a stone fit the space. Or force it by manually reshaping the stone with the mallet and chisel. It seemed so simple – apply the head of the chisel to the stone where a break would make it fit, even though it had denied it was the right stone. But stones have their own minds. I would strike the chisel with the mallet and the rock would break along lines it wished, not necessarily what I intended. Stones break where they wanted to break, not where I willed it. A new stone emerged, but not one that could fill the space in the way I had planned. The wall design itself would become fluid and change.
Learning patience and flexibility, I had to adapt to the shapes of the rocks; they did not adapt to me. The needs constantly shifted. Uneven stones were unstable; they needed support. Rough surfaces wanted to show; they argued with the smooth-faced ones.
Stability was a constant discussion. Yes, gravity is a wall’s friend, but stability demanded that each course be slightly back from the previous one, “batter,” wallers call it. As the wall sloped gently backward into the dirt piled behind, its stability became a dilemma. The stones would ease back into open space, demanding rubble stone for stability. Or, if the stone argued that it was the wrong one in the wrong place, it would topple into the dirt. The less beautiful stones spoke up: we may not be facing stones, like those ones in front, but we can help back here where support is needed.
The jumbled, back-and-forth dialogue of the stones ended with the last course. From the very start, some stones just announced that they were perfect topping stones: flat, broad, thick, heavy, more rectangular, covering the whole surface of the wall, the grandparents of the pallet. They set themselves aside and waited, two years in, to speak up. They had to tell me their edges matched; this had to be tight, this course. I could only get them up by using that 1X6, pushing and sliding until they settled in order along the wall.
Every few days, an hour or two of this and I could do no more. The stones stopped talking. Rested. Even when I reached the top, the wall was not done. The French poet, Paul Verlaine once said of a poem that it was never complete, only abandoned. The wall was a zen poem I abandoned irregularly; it was incomplete, even when I said it was done. Like poetry, it kept changing, adapting, fitting, and then, not fitting the form I had planned.
Two years in, I abandoned it, unfinished, perfect in its imperfections. Drystone walls are alive. They are anchored in the earth and respond to the weather and the seasons. The ground freezes and thaws; the wall shifts and moves. Supporting stones call for help as they lose their grip on gravity. The natural world invades. Rodents tunnel through spaces. Ivy grasps stones, grows roots, shifts them some more. Lichen changes the face of the wall. Rain and melting show turned purple fieldstone to grey. I had moved on, but the wall continued to speak and change.
I moved on and began to collect stones as I walked. One at a time, as a companion, a memory. Only the stone that called out from a forest path, rocky beach, or hillside. I carried a firm bag wherever I walked or simply stuffed them, heavy, into my pockets. They were eclectic, different shapes, sharp edged or round; striated or plain; small or so large I had to carry it in my hand. There were miniature rocky crevasses, round black stones with white lines through them, evenly spaced. Pink quartz, a reminder of my first love. When the stone spoke, I picked it up.
For a while, I added them to the wall. I would write the date and place I had picked them up on the underside and set them on the top course. But I decided that marking them was an effort to freeze the experience in place and time. The stones needed to live and find themselves. And they did, as children walked along the top of the wall, or snow fell, or an animal scampered along. The smaller stones would move, topple off, even disappear on a journey somewhere.
Others formed a growing collection of paperweights, anchoring the ephemeral paper pages of my life. Or they would sit quietly on bookshelves, guardians of the volumes behind them. Decorate the white lintel shelf over the fireplace, reflecting flames and candlelight. I found a small, rectangular wooden box, with an open side full of small compartments just right for those that had more delicate, smaller voices.
I moved to Maine, where drystone walling is an ancient art. Centuries ago, farmers cleared the fields of stones to make room for crops or graze sheep. The stones would be pitched loosely to the side of the field or laid on top of each other as a fence. At one point there were more than 200,000 miles of stone walls in New England. Thousands of miles remain today, some crumbled and crushed as weather and gravity tipped them aside. Others are restored or were simply so elegantly built that they survive intact.
Some of the ancient walls are breathtakingly elegant. One of my favorites is a drystone wall on Rte. 123 in Harpswell Center, Maine, about 10 miles from my house. It is about 3 feet high, running more than forty feet on each side of the 200-year old Harpswell Meeting House, which sits on a dry stone foundation.
The wall is amazing. Almost none of the stones are flat. They are round, large and small, some on edge, covered by boulders. There are no topping stones; gravity and placement holds it together. Because of the curved stones, there are places where one can see right through the wall to the cemetery behind it. The wall looks like it will fall at any moment. But the effect is like lace; rather than subside, the stones seem ready to fly into the air.
In other places the boulders are in motion, tumbling over each other like kids playing leapfrog. The energy is palpable.
The Harpswell Center wall has stood there for over 200 years, flying, rushing and as solid, well, as a rock.
The modern drystone walls of New England are equally beautiful. On the north side of Middle Bay Road in Brunswick, Maine, just after a rise, a contemporary waller has created a masterpiece. Two parts, about 40 feet long, frame the driveway. This wall is not loose, energetic, and delicate. It is carefully shaped and tightly built. No stone is out of place; each lives exactly where it should, intimately nestled to its neighbors. Stones on each successive course overlap with two stones below it, the sturdy pattern for a strong wall.
As if to say “all order must contain some disorder,” on the far right, just before the end of the wall, one stone breaks the orderly pattern. Large, shaped like a perfect triangle, its point cuts through three courses in the wall, contradicting the spacing of the rest. That one stone is a deliberate, creative idiosyncrasy. I imagine the waller listening, listening, with that large triangular object asking to be different, to make the wall a masterpiece.
I started looking at picture books of walls. I fell in love with the artwork of Andy Goldsworthy, an imaginative Scottish outdoor waller, who makes stone walls that weave freely through trees. There is a wonderful film about his work – “Rivers and Tides” - including an egg-shaped cairn six feet high.
He builds one of these in the film. It sits at the edge of the ocean, thin plates of rock starting small at the base, spreading out wide as it rises, and narrowing at the top. Completely dry-laid. In the tide, which rises, covers it, then subsides, leaving the egg in place. I went to the East Wing of the National Gallery in Washington, DC, where he built nine drystone, hollow domes, called “Roof,” more than 30 feet in diameter, half of some of them inside the gallery; half of outside the glass wall that appears to cut through the middle.
Galsworthy hears the voices: “When I touch a rock, I am touching and working the space around it. It is not independent of its surroundings, and the way it sits tells how it came to be there."
I continued to collect, one at a time. On every outing – a forest trail in Harpswell where the inlets peek through the pines, climbing Mt. Battie for a 360-degree view over Camden harbor, Schoodic Point where a giant plaza of multi-leveled rock meets the sea that explodes up through the crevasses – a stone would speak and leap into my hand. Take me; remember this place!
Then the time came. Advancing age and family call. It is time to move again. Would I take these many weighty, vocal companions with me across the continent to the Pacific? Leave them in the garden, abandoned? Then it came to me. They lived in or near the Atlantic. They were made by the sea, receding glaciers running to the sea, or eruptions on the earth near the sea. They asked to return to their origins: the Atlantic.
I am returning them with gratitude and ceremony. Carrying them in boxes and bags, I drive in the dark to the sea. Adding my voice of gratitude for their company, for their voices, for what they have taught me. I returned them to mother earth and sea, grateful and remembering.
Two stones remain. Two friends asked me to pick out a stone for them, as a memory of my time in Maine. It was not easy; I had to listen, hard, take the time, for the right stone to be in the right hand. Rocks are serious business; they are ancestral energy. They had to speak up.
The Voices of Stones
I just now stumbled onto this writing even though I have been a subscriber for some time. Superb and enchanting. As I read your descriptions of the stones I recalled the stone work of Pete's brother, Dan, who built a perfect cairn in a large room exhibiting miscellaneous art forms for a big show in Malibu. I recall that Dan had a video of his work from start to finish. He later told me the relief he felt when he demonstrated to the patrons as shown in the video the sturdiness of the cairn by throwing his weight with outstretched arms against the top sides....and the cairn didn't budge an inch. He had privately feared an immediate collapse of hundreds of stones.
While reading I kept thinking I had to let you know about Dan's work and Pete of your work. I was pleased to see that Pete had already done so.
Your rock of ages type relationship also struck a harmonious chord. I had always planned when I retired to replace a shaky old wooden bridge across a small rivulet in our front yard with a small stone Burnside bridge. I knew I had a lot of learning and hard work ahead of me but relished the beauty of such a work of stone. The Holiday Farm Fire destroyed Dan's video and my dream as well. Best wishes.
Beautifully written. I'm a big fan of Goldsworthy and the rock walls I met in upstate NY. Hope we can connect when you settle out here in the Wild West.