Stone walls

[SteveP]

In new England there are stone walls everywhere.
They were mostly built 200 yrs ago by local farmers trying to remove stone from their fields.
It's fun to track the old walls through the woods.

Some of that construction is super durable.
Some years ago we had a big spring flood that took out almost every bridge on a local river.
Only bridge that survived was the Choate bridge in ipswich. Built of Stone in 1760 by local farmers.
It's a double arch stone bridge...
When the flood was highest the water rose above the top of the arches. The water sprayed out the other side..it looked like water coming out of a fire hose.

Pretty remarkable.
Bridge...no problem.

[rowdyhillrambler]

We have one on our farm, and the Tennessee landscape is packed with them. Most all of these were slave built. But, to think that 200 years later they still stand and do the job is always amazing to me. I love seeing them.

[Tom]

Its cool to go around the hills in Vermont where I grew up and when the leaves are down you see the walls heading off through the woods. Back then that was a farm and a field somebody cleared by hand.

[monadnocky]

So ubiquitous in northern New England it's like seeing a cloud. They literally don't even register in our consciousness (for the most part) but if you think about their purpose and construction it's mind-boggling.

Also mind-boggling is the fact that, as I understand it, all of New England save some parts of Maine were pretty much devoid of trees trees about 200 years ago.

Tom Wessels, an Antioch New England professor, has an AMAZING book out about "reading" the New England landscape- he discusses stone walls quite a bit.

Reading the Forested Landscape.jpg

[davids]

We do tend to take these beauties for granted. They're really works of high craftsmanship, at least the best of them. I was thinking about this in Hawaii, where we saw some lovely mortarless structures built from lava rock. Similar to the kind of construction we see in NE.



I remember the first time I ran into a decaying wall in the middle of the Blue Hills Reservation. It sort of drove home monadnocky's point about reforestation: What was farmland in the not-too-distant past is now an overgrown, forested reserve (with some gnarly mountain biking...)

And Tom Wessels! He does an annual program on reading the landscape, run out of the Retreat Center associated with the family camp we used to attend in Maine: Reading the Landscape :: Family Summer Camp Corporate Retreat Center Medomak Washington Maine My wife was able to tag along with the program once, and accompanied him to Acadia for a day. She loved it. (One of his Antioch students was, at the time, the Retreat Center director. She's now teaching science and sustainability at Vermont Academy.)

[einreb]

We have one on our farm, and the Tennessee landscape is packed with them. Most all of these were slave built. But, to think that 200 years later they still stand and do the job is always amazing to me. I love seeing them.

Apparently has roots in Scots-Irish immigrants to Tennessee. I love those walls... the color, cracks, crevasse, moss, proportions, etc.

[echelon_john]

If you're ever close to Storm King art center just outside Kingston, NY, check out the Andy Goldsworthy wall there. Amazing piece of work.

goldsworthy.jpg

[monadnocky]

...And Tom Wessels! He does an annual program on reading the landscape, run out of the Retreat Center associated with the family camp we used to attend in Maine: Reading the Landscape :: Family Summer Camp Corporate Retreat Center Medomak Washington Maine My wife was able to tag along with the program once, and accompanied him to Acadia for a day. She loved it. (One of his Antioch students was, at the time, the Retreat Center director. She's now teaching science and sustainability at Vermont Academy.)

Tom is an institution in and of himself- an amazing environmental scientist, naturalist, and educator. Even more amazing is the fact that the guy actually looks like an Ent.

[EricKeller]

there is an old canal path that they turned into a road alongside the lackawaxen river in Pennsylvania. Next to the road there is a stone wall that just keeps going on and on for miles. I assume the stone came from the canal work.

[Mabouya]

[SteveP]

I love the goldsworthy sculptures
Fantastic.
He has one at Stanford as well.

Stone snake (my name)

[happycampyer]

Mending Wall

— Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

[boyracer]

I had a young Irish bloke working for me a few years back that had done a full 4 year apprenticeship as a dry stone wall builder. He couldn't
cope with the summer heat in the outback (^45 deg c) where the fences are
around here ( South Australia).

[devlin]

I have a stone wall at home. She is very effective at stopping me most days.

[Will Neide]

If you're ever close to Storm King art center just outside Kingston, NY, check out the Andy Goldsworthy wall there. Amazing piece of work.

goldsworthy.jpg

That's a pretty cool looking wall. Reminds me of a Golgi Apparatus.

[GrantM]

So ubiquitous in northern New England it's like seeing a cloud. They literally don't even register in our consciousness (for the most part) but if you think about their purpose and construction it's mind-boggling.

They were one of the first things I commented on while riding in CT with Darren, and he hadn't noticed much about them.
After a couple of days, even he was pointing out particularly nice ones. I joked about moving there to open
a stone wall repair business, but the fact they're so well built, there isn't much need for one.

-g

[Mike Mcdermid]

Apparently has roots in Scots-Irish immigrants to Tennessee. I love those walls... the color, cracks, crevasse, moss, proportions, etc.

this is quite possibly true dry stone walling has been around in the UK for a very long time when le tour came to yorkshire there were a few riders who thought they were dangerous if you hit them, of course us hardcore riders dont think this

[fortyfour]

I was speaking with a community member here in Lyndeborough who was born and raisedand apparently, all the stone walls were surveyed at some point in New England (I know they are protected here in NH and you need permission from the state to alter one significantly). From what I can dig up, I believe it was the US Dept. of Agriculture in 1939 using a previous report/data collected in 1871? I know it's estimated to be something like 240,000 miles of stone walls in New England. I know on any given ride I have to cross 10+ stone walls in the woods. From what I do know, most were for sheep herds for the wool trade here in my part of New Hampshire.

One of my personal favorites on one of my local loops:

[jacked]

These dry stack walls are all over central KY where limestone is plentiful. Never appreciated them enough before moving away long ago. They make good bourbon aging barns too.

Travelogue-Day-5-Ambiance-1-Gear-Patrol.jpg

[SteveP]

They were one of the first things I commented on while riding in CT with Darren, and he hadn't noticed much about them.
After a couple of days, even he was pointing out particularly nice ones. I joked about moving there to open
a stone wall repair business, but the fact they're so well built, there isn't much need for one.

-g

" jayssus, every 200 years im going to have to fix the damn thing?"

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