If you ask our dog Beau what the purpose of a stone wall is, he will say that obviously it’s to make chipmunks. Beau is endlessly entertained watching chipmunks emerge from the wall beside our house, scurry about, and disappear into the rocks. Brilliant!
Robert Frost’s poem Mending Wall is often misquoted by removing a single line from its context: “Good fences make good neighbors.” Frost (or the speaker of the poem) walks with his neighbor along the stone wall that separates their properties, replacing stones that have been dislodged. He thinks it’s silly when his neighbor delivers the infamous line. After all, if there’s nothing to be kept in or out, what’s the point of a wall?: “He is all pine and I am apple orchard/My apple trees will never come across/And eat the cones under his pines…”
In the 18th and 19th centuries, though, the estimated 250,000 miles of stone walls in New England did much more than merely mark boundaries — they kept livestock contained (lots of sheep in New Hampshire), and they held the boulders, rocks, and stones hauled out of the soil to clear fields for crops. A lot of sweat and hope went into those walls, and I am astounded and enthralled by them.
The wall pictured here is near an old cellar hole in the woods about a mile from our house. To get there, the dogs and I meandered off on an old Mount Israel Road roadbed and then took an even smaller road/path that headed up the side of the mountain. Steve told me there was a cellar hole up there, and I knew I was near when I came upon a fairly flat area beside a flowing brook with this substantial wall bisecting the woods. Look at the size of those stones. Holy smokes!
In 1830, the population of Sandwich was 2,744, about double what it is today, and most were farm families. (There were 32 shoemakers according to the 1850 census. What’s with that? Obviously, I have a lot to learn.) Interestingly, land on mountainsides was most prized because it drained well and saved crops from destructive early and late freezes. Thus, when hiking mountain trails in the area, it’s not unusual to come across stone walls in areas that now seem impossibly remote.
Here are Gracie and Beau heading down a section of the old Mount Israel Road with me. Booty Family Farmers call it the “Mushroom Road,” because it’s a good place to collect wild mushrooms. I don’t recommend this practice unless you really know what you’re doing. Yikes!
Beau is on the lookout for squirrels, and when we get near a stone wall, chipmunks. Gracie, being all-Lab, is looking for anything that smells even remotely edible (this includes tree bark, like a deer), and I’m aware that bears have come out of hibernation early this year due to the mild weather. (I kept Beau on his leash… Just sayin’!)
Below is a photo of a stone wall on our property. Todd has been mending and adding to this wall, not because we want to keep out the neighbors, but because he and Steve have been clearing some land by our house, using the timber for next season’s firewood and a Poplar or two for shingles for Steve and Rachel’s house across the street. Todd just seeded the new clearing with meadow grass, and I’m referring to it as the horse pasture, but don’t hold your breath. (I just love everything about horses, even their smell. Don’t you? Okay, I don’t like when they bite your fingers when you’re feeding them carrots, or when they try to scrape you off on a low tree branch as they’re galloping back to the barn…)
If you’d like to read Robert Frost’s Mending Wall, click here. Did you know that April is National Poetry Month? Sweet.
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