The following quotations provide inspiration and context to my work with clients helping them build balanced, durable, and well integrated businesses.
"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them"
“The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.”
—Henry David Thoreau
“Stones are like people, with individual personalities that express themselves as shapes, and the builder’s job, in a way, is to surround each one with a group of compatible partners that conform to one another, nest on, over, and against one another, and compensate for one another’s weaknesses as readily and familiarly as possible. The quality of the harmony among shapes that you build into your wall, stone by stone, is directly responsible for its beauty and a major contributor to its longevity.”
“But there is always a moment, sooner or later, when the immature jumble coalesces, and your wall achieves form and presence. Some walls take longer than others to reach this point—occasionally, full development isn't visible until the piece is capped and finished...In this respect, the act of building is an act of faith, all the more reason to pay attention to process before progress. The beauty of a good wall is an accumulation of small excellences, a deft, pleasing, personal pattern that can only be achieved one stone at a time."
“The piling up of stones is a human activity ancient almost beyond calculation. Dry masonry belongs to every culture, in every part of the world where stones can be found. It is among the most primitive, practicable methods by which people organize their surroundings. After tens of thousands of years, it may be genetically or instinctually encoded in us, like our predispositions for language or art. 'Entire millennia of human labors are known to us solely through their stone leavings,' says Scott Sanders in his book about the limestone country of southern Indiana. 'The only common stuff that rivals it for durability is language.' So stone walls are beautiful because, even when they are new, they are very, very old. Theirs is a beauty of continuity with the ordinary work of people throughout history.”
—Kevin Gardner, The Granite Kiss, Traditions and Techniques of Building New England Stone Walls
“If you stop and think about it, it seems that, written word aside, the most enduring monuments to man's creativity and hard work are built of stone.”
“There is no such thing as a half-built stone wall. It's either a wall or a stone pile.”
“Stone walls, wildlife, and the natural landscape go together. Unlike other forms of "fencing," stone walls lend a sense of harmony to the land. As such structures "age," lichens and mosses decorate the stone in a mosaic of subtle greens and grays. Vines climb over the wall, anchoring their tendrils in the multitude of interstices. Trees and shrubs invade, the wall's foundation adding vertical dimension to the horizontal traverse. As the wall ages with its succession of plant growth, many birds and animals take up residence amid the rocks and niches of the invading vegetation.”
—John Vivian, Building Stone Walls, Second Edition
“For much of its existence, the well-built stone wall, like carefully constructed fencing of all kinds, was looked on as an index of a good and well-ordered settlement, a measure of a farmer's worth and capabilities. In the original 1828 edition of Noah Webster's dictionary, the definition for 'fence' noted that 'broken windows and poor fences are evidences of idleness or poverty or both.' Timothy Dwight, Yale University's itinerant president of the late eighteenth century, expressed the same commonly held opinion when he observed that 'a farm well surrounded and divided by good stone walls presents to my mind, irresistibly, the image of tidy, skillful, profitable agriculture, and promises to me within doors the still more agreeable prospect of plenty and prosperity.’”
—Susan Allport, Sermons in Stone: The Stone Walls of New England and New York
“And in every season, the touch of a stone wall, rough, smooth, edgy, communicates power, mystery, stability. Far from static, the wall grows as a living feature of the land, completing trees, shrubs, providing movement to the garden as chipmunks scamper through and across the rocks.”
“And, like the pleasure that gardeners feel the first time a collection of plants starts to look like a garden, the joy of seeing a wall grow comfortable on the land is great. And hard won: Herding rocks is some of the most back-aching gardening I’ve ever done. And some of the most satisfying…”
“When my work was done, I understood that while wall-building is physically demanding, requiring a lot of patience and a bit of common sense about weight and balance, it isn’t brain surgery. With unhurried steadiness, the least handy and crafty among us can do this and reap a fine harvest, even from a crooked, modest wall like mine. Wall-making inspires contemplation, and it’s oddly soothing, connecting us to ageless rock and timeless labor…”
—Lee May, “Fence Me In: New England’s Stone Walls Are as Much Form as They are Function,” USAirways Attach’e
“When now and again a stone falls into a place that is utterly inevitable, I feel I am suddenly standing under a shower of grace.” For an instant I become inevitable, too. I share the compatibility that stone finds with stone. If I'm lucky, it happens a lot. Then again, some days it doesn't happen at all. Grace may fall in the next moment or never again. I know only that if I put myself with stone, it may happen again, so I keep on walling."
"I am continually surprised and delighted by what the earth has to offer through the handling of its loose stone. Can you imagine anything in static form with greater variety than the stone scattered loosely over the earth? The sky is full of clouds of intense variety, but before we can take a second look at them they've changed. Stones keep their shapes for so long, I don't have to wonder how they may someday change. For the purposes of a waller, stone is immortal."
“For me, part of the allure of walling is in making something from nothing. Collecting what has been overlooked or unappreciated and creating something useful with it feels like an alchemist’s trick. To make the most of not much is the waller’s magic.”
“When the waller releases the stone, it is transformed from a stone into a piece of a wall. Only its having been let go, at that time, in that place, distinguishes it from all other stone.”
“Stones seem to want to congregate. In a stream they remain together when all else is washed away. On a mountain top they endure when everything else is blown away. Every piece finds its right relationship to every other.”
“While not exactly lighthearted, stone is playful; it hides its bumptious nature well. Within the volume of each stone is an immutable center, and from that point radiate all forces of movement. My attention is drawn to that spot; the truth of where the stone is headed is held there.”
“Every wall can tell a story about its maker once we understand the language that stone speaks. Every stone is visible proof of the builder's degree of contentment. A stone that looks satisfied with its position reflects the sense of ease the waller felt when placing it there.”
—Dan Snow, In the Company of Stone: The Art of the Stone Wall
“Why stone? Well, why not? For building or landscaping, you simply can't do better. Stone is weatherproof, raptor proof, insect proof, and long lived. Whether you use it in rustic or formal designs, it signifies good taste; a stone entryway, curving wall, arch, or path is quietly elegant and looks expensive. In this age of throwaways, stone is also psychologically appealing; it represents strength, stability, and permanence. It provides a sense of shelter and security and blessed simplicity when we're tired of flimsiness and confusion."
"Placing one stone atop another goes back as far as our dimmest beginnings, and there's still something elemental in our use of stone in any form today. The art and craft of masonry involve a kind of triumph over a hard, heavy, unyielding adversary. And once the rock is properly positioned, it's there, a monument for centuries. Stone cathedrals, medieval castles, and even ancient Roman arched bridges and aqueducts are still standing and will be around as long as anything we build today."
"Not everyone will be able to learn to do first-rate stonework. Some of my apprentices pick up the basic skills in a few days; others never do. One carpenter who wanted to learn stone worked with me for two years, and his last job was no better than his first. Stonework is not for everyone. But everyone can learn from handling stone: the discipline, the craft, the satisfaction that comes from artfully placing this substance. Even if you do not become a master mason, the rewards are still great. You are building for all time."
"Stones are all about time—time to find them, to move them, to place them, and time, occasionally, to chisel and shape them. And above all, time to see them, experience them, and fall under their spell."
—Charles McRaven, Stonework: Techniques and Projects
“Stone is a material inextricably linked to the history of the human race. It has offered shelter from the climate, protection from enemies, housed gods, reflected the wealth of kings and recorded the coming and going of the seasons. It has been used to make both tools and weapons of war, to make the wheel to grind corn, to carve and sculpt and to commemorate the honoured and the dead. The act of accomplishing anything of size in stone involves the organisation of labour and other support services. A civilisation that achieved high standards of work in stone therefore was invariably one that was relatively stable and sophisticated.”
—Patrick McAfee, Irish Stone Walls
“The walls that stand do so by grace of the very same forces that have tumbled the walls that no longer stand. The same pull that has made a huggermugger pile of these stones keeps these a wall, one stone atop the other supporting the other that supports another in an integrated structure that rides out the sighs of the earth. Thus there exists in time the structure/process that is called a wall. These other stones, fallen, are a less-structured process called a heap.”
—Denise McCluggage, The Centered Skier (Waitsfield, VT 1997) For more information about fieldstones and the appreciation and conservation of New England’s stone walls, see: The Stone Wall Initiative
For more photographs of stone walls, see: New England Stone Walls, Icon at Risk |
