Stone Walls

I was reading Yankee magazine & found an article by Jim Collins about New England's stone walls. It was an interview with Robert Thorson, a geologist at the University of Connecticut, who has written books about these ominipresent structures, such as Stone by Stone & Good Fences: A Pictorial History of New England's Stone Walls. He also coordinates an educational organization called the Stone Wall Initiative.

In the article, he describes how the New England landscape is so similar to the "Old England" landscape - those good ol' glaciers did their thing on both sides of the pond. Although stone walls can be found all over, he says, "only in New England are they a part of the landscape".

Our property is outlined by very old stone walls. Going up our street, most of the properties are. My grandparents owned about a hundred acres of land in north-central MA. Stone walls delineated each of the fields, followed along the roads & marked off the private way through the woods to the pond & wet lands on the property.

I've always known stone walls to be very visible part of the landscape. It never occurred to me that it wasn't that way in most of the country. Turns out, according to the article, people pay good money to have authentic NE fieldstones, all weathered & lichen-covered, brought to their homes to give their landscape an aged look.

I'm grateful I don't need to manufacture the history of my land. I know who owned it before us (they live just up the street!) & I know that the meadow was filled with old apple & black walnut trees, thorn bushes & poison ivy. I know this because we were out there clearing it, uncovering the walls that had been buried by time.

Stone by stone...