surrounded

The porcupine was back today. It was only Chaucer and I walking, Henry decided to stay home because he woke up with a headache, so I was able to walk right up to it and snap some pictures before Chaucer drove it into the woods and up a tree. My little walk took on its usual inward tone and I was able to walk in silence (which I love). I do miss Henry's little voice and ample conversation though. I saw the first blue bird of the season. Flashes of blue in the tree branches. As I was walking I noticed that there was a stone wall, way across the river on what now is something of an island in the middle of marsh. It got me thinking about the past. I am surrounded by the past, and not just my past, but all of ours. Einstein was right to consider it into our dimensions. It is everywhere. Rutland State Park is a poignant

reminder of this. The park used to be a prison surrounded by far reaching farms and remnants of that are littered among the woods and fields of the park. Henry and I found a massive, too big to fit into a picture and not the one pictured above, stone structure yesterday. It must have been a bridge over the river, or the makings of a dam. The boulders were the size of me. The entire thing was at least three times my hieght. These boulders must have been put there by hand, or horse... horse and hand, because there was no access to the work. The trees had grown all around, and even on it. This land was manicured and worked hundreds of years ago. The fields that this porcupine combs for food are remnants of prisoners working them for vegetables and pasture.

In New England we are surrounded by the lasting tributes to the hard working people who settled the land we live on. Stone walls are everywhere. They ribbon over the land in front of and in back of my house and each of the houses on my road, each of the roads in my town, the surrounding towns and counties in our state and throughout New England. It is only in the cities that they have vanished. Made up of stones that were pulled out of the earth by hand and plow, they are as poignant a reminder as the famed Easter Island effigies. It is only because we are surrounded by them with such frequency that they are ignored as historical markers. When this land was tamed, they were made.

In some ways, I feel a sense of guilt when I look out of  my window. The difficulty they faced in farming this land must have been staggering. Some of these stone walls cut through swampland in the park and climb the steepest of the hills that I walk on. They line each road and sometimes reach

far over my head. Each rock pulled out of ground to be made usable for agriculture by someone's hand and placed on the outskirts of their effort. A lasting symbol of their frustration. I am building a firewood shed this weekend. I cleared out the ground in front of it and under the tangle of prickers were these stones. I don't think that they had "grown" there on their own. There is an enormous boulder next to where I am building, and I think they were piled next to it by someone looking to get rid of them. I decided to add some of them to the stone wall in front of my house. I pulled 10 of them out and placed them by wheelbarrow into the sparser parts of the wall in front of my house. I couldn't help but think of whoever it was that had done this before me and the steel like strength they must have had to build this stretch of wall. Miles long.

We stand on the shoulders of hard men and women. Their effort has shaped where we live and really who we are. We are taught of their determination in school and movies are continually made because of  the wonder of their strength. It is impossible to escape. We are their descendants and heirs to the results of their toil. To live on top of that without acknowledging their work would be callous. And to not allow their work ethic to at least shape our own, may be the folly of what we ourselves are building.

db