MORE MAX & SOME ON STONE WALLS

I’ve roamed these woods and fields for more than 27 years now, and still I come across piled stone walls in unexpected places, centuries of grunt work done by hand. Country like this can wear you down. This land grows rocks as easily as it grows spruce trees. You can’t so much as plant a sapling without clearing dozens of rocks from the hole. If there were only a way to make some money off them!

Years ago, the first Winter that we lived here, I was tromping around after a major snowfall when a red fox led me to something odd. The sight of a red fox on virgin snow is rare and very beautiful, a ruby in the rough. He saw me first, I’m sure. Wood creatures usually know you’re there before you do. The fox stood on a small rise looking back at me over its shoulder. I stopped as soon as I saw it, and, nearly the instant I did, the fox took off at a trot towards a configuration of stones I’d never seen before, dove in, and disappeared. It must have been his den. Clear sets of tracks showed his comings and goings, and the piles of stone slabs seemed to be an old foundation. But it was deep in the woods and hard to reach, and made me wonder who had lived there? I figured Max would know. He’s lived most of his 56 years up here and knows about everything there is to know including local gossip. He stopped by later in the week, and I asked him. Turns out local scuttlebutt has it that at one time the insane were housed there. It must have been a cold and miserable place. I’m not superstitious, but now, during a storm when the wind wails and moans, my mind turns to Purgatory and the misery of lost souls. Of course, I don’t believe this, however, if I’d lived a hundred years ago I might have.

One day, Max and I got to talking about these walls. We’d both heard that landscape designers were pillaging them for the owners of second homes. Rocks with lichen were especially valuable, and rocks with lichen were what we had, tons and tons of rocks with lichen. We could take apart some of these hidden stone walls that no one could see and go to market with them. Being the astute businessman that I am, this idea went nowhere. Well, almost nowhere. Max raided a wall behind the barn, trucked the stone slabs to the front of our house, and then spent innumerable days putting them together again. Max would stand there and study the stones with the concentration of a chess player until he saw how best they fit, and now an old stone wall, precisely built and balanced, borders our front lawn. It’s a beauty, impressive as any stone wall is impressive, but, if you look closely to see how perfectly it’s been put together, it’s even moreso. Max is as proud of this construction as any sculptor would be, and the sight of it never fails to give me great pleasure.