On Being Away From Stones
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It is not good to be away from stones too long. A poor substitute for being with stones and working with them is writing about them. But sometimes that is all one can do. The weather is harsh here in Canada in winter. Where I live sometimes 5 months go by without being able to build the dry stone walls that form so much of my work through the rest of the year. This Saturday morning I can only sit and look out at the stretch of wall I finished last spring. I built it in a bit of a rush to help re-dignify the dishevelled lot on which we'd recently situated an old 3 bay Georgian house board by board, nestling it amongst the tall pines and cedars.

The wall looks great. The weather doesn't. I will have to think about walls today and contemplate on why they look so good and seem to work so well in any weather. Unlike me. I don't work well in really freezing weather. The best conditions for working are the cool misty days. I guess they remind me of Scotland. I seem to be able to build better walls on those days. As I work I sometimes imagine I hear bagpipes droning off in the distance . The timeworn elements of the craft feel like they are draining back into my hands and body as I work in the cool dampness. But today it is too cold. I would be fighting the elements.

That's the problem. There are too many other elements. What are there now, well over a hundred or so of them on the periodic table? Surely there doesn't need to be so many. The basic ones are enough. The ones that make rocks hard and water wet. The ones that make wood burn and food taste good. All the others complicate matters or should I say 'matter'. What 'matters' is that a modest number of things have already combined to give substance to reality. The atoms of calcium and cobalt, the sulphates and oxides , the traces of metal and granules of mica and schist all having formed such wonderful shapes and sizes and types of stone. These are things that lend weight and significance to what we do. So many of the other elements seem unstable, (take uranium for example) too flighty , too ethereal , certainly too numerous to properly solidify and be set into workable patterns. The weather and the many other things we call 'the elements' seem to change on a whim. Human nature is fickle. The stock market fluctuates. The value of our possessions depreciate. Our future is uncertain. It's all so unpredictable. Notions come and go as with varying 'elements' of fashion which clutter the fundamentals of our existence. With a stone however, you know where you stand. The elements of the mineral world have combined long ago. They have made up their minds, and decided to stay with it, and more importantly, stick it out for eternity or at least until heaven and earth pass away. This is something you don't get with other elements of life.

Look out over the endless fields of choice, doubt and misunderstanding. A dry stone wall passes through these things , onward over the landscape in an ordered march of solid purpose. In a wall there are few elements of indecision or preponderance. Everything is reduced to a simple number of considerations. Nothing is taken for granted or over emphasized. You work with what you have, and although there may be a lot of stones and a lot of time, there doesn't really have to be a dazzling variety of anything else.

Submitted by John Shaw-Rimmington