The stone wall in front of the office is being demolished, one stone at a time. It isn’t father time taking back his children; it’s the hand of man removing what has become “untidy”, “unsightly”, and time-worn.
What made people build the wall? Is it the need to create order in the world? Stone walls line roadways, marking boundaries, keeping things in and things out, distinguishing between what belongs and what doesn’t.
That same need for order now causes its destruction. The decision has been made that it is old, expensive to maintain, irrelevant and unwanted. Office personnel take a stone here, a stone there, turning them over, judging the worth, the usefulness of each. In the end they will all be gone.
There are many stone walls in Delaware County, NY. Each similar in their make-up and many in some state of disrepair. What is repair to a decorative wall? The boundaries they once marked have changed hands many times, rendering them a quaint reminder of the past.
Where water has sundered the mountainside in the form of waterfalls near Hamden, NY, I see the same bluestone. It is water-worn, untidy, wild. As it should be. Allowed--even beautiful--as long as it stays in its place.
Taken from the mountain, bluestone has become walkways, stairs, porches. It is everywhere, a ubiquitous piece of the mountainside man-handled into a useful and usable resting place until it is shuffled off, ancient, feeble, and unwanted. An old-timer, wracked with age, stones tumbled, taken down and away via excavator and trailer, to grace the front lawn of the Watershed Agricultural Council office in Hamden, NY no more.
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