There is something very positive, very self-determined about a rock. It knows what it wants and what its about. When you pick it up in your hands, it has surprising weight. It has this undeniable tendency to want to get down or be put down. Being so earnestly attracted to the earth is a very attractive quality. Everything is affected by gravity for sure, but stones just seem to gravitate to it. A glass slips out of your hand and it falls and breaks and you get the sense that this was not supposed to happen. Pick a stone up and drop it, as long as you move your feet, it seems somehow part of some well devised plan. Stones love to be heavy. They were meant for it. Place them one upon another and their sheer weight locks them into position. In fact, the only thing that holds rocks up for any length of time are other rocks. Stones work together well. Stones get along. And stones get along surprisingly well in a dry stone wall.
Working with stones building a dry stone wall, requires that you know what you want to do. You don't lift a huge rock onto a part of a wall you are building, without being fairly certain it is going to fit there. Stones require forethought and planning. You have to be sure you want to move them. They are not stubborn so much as cautious of us. They are not sure we have thought long enough about where they should ultimately be positioned, for the next hundred years or so. After all, before we move them, they most likely will have been sitting, pretty much where they were for some thousands of years. It is good to tune into the restrained weightiness which stones particularly, possess. Restraint is a good thing to learn from stones. Without peace and restraint there is only straining. We probably experience most strains and stresses, because we are not discerning the kind of things stones can tell us. Eventually, we should be able to learn how to exchange time and effort for a sense of purpose, perspective and peace.
It is ironic that something so hard and heavy as a rock can produce in us such joy and lightheartedness. For a material with so much gravity and reticence, it is remarkable how well it allows itself to be put into formations that uplift the soul and free the imagination. Perhaps stones are soft on the inside. Perhaps secretly they like us, and know what we need. Maybe beneath their harsh exterior of silence and coldness there is an optimistic enamoured heart of stone.
-- This article appeared recently in the Dry Stone Walls Association of Australia Newsletter
issue #3 Feb 2005