A few flakes of snow fell yesterday, drifting slowly like downy feathers from a goose that had been shot. Looking up, I saw no goose and realized that the feathers were snowflakes and winter was coming. I imagined black bears in the beech forest covering themselves with leaves and closing their little eyes and I thought it safe to put out birdseed, and so I did.
Three birdfeeders hung from the porch, bringing in, within minutes, dozens of bluejays, finches, chickadees, tufted titmice, woodpeckers and nuthatches. Had they been watching my daily moves, asking, “When will the old one put out our food?” Now, at once, they took turns dashing in and grabbing. Winter, so dull of color and quiet of song, joyfully sends out the chickadee acrobats to keep me laughing.
Summer is awash with songs from sunup to dark and smells of rain falling on flowers. But when the fields of goldenrods and asters turn ochre and brown, and the only color left on the maple trees is a crown of pink on the tips of small twigs, the outside chores must be tackled, for snow can arrive any day, making everything hard.
This year’s task was Sisyphean. The old stone wall out back was failing; it had been for 30 years. Schist rocks had softened, grew sunburst lichens, grasses and moss, then became thin like sheets of shale and fell. My hero Isaac Newton’s law of universal gravitation reminds us that this will happen over time. The second law of Thermodynamics also explains why order eventually crumbles into disorder. The wall that was once horizontal lay in every direction but. All magnificent works of humans and wonders of nature will eventually return to the earth — pyramids, churches, redwood forests, reflecting pools and stone walls.
I set out to find a stone mason, not an easy task in 2026 when many workers spend their days building abstract ideas, shoveling monetary losses and gains online, and creating currency out of equations that do not exist in the real world. I needed to find a craftsperson, an artist with strong hands, back and head — and machinery and access to stone. I waited a couple of years, but this fall he arrived: Mike, the stone mason, with his old John Deere tractor, bucket and a load of stone from a nearby quarry.
We worked together taking down the old wall, and I remembered how I love stonework — going to bed at night exhausted and sore, happy to be making something beautiful. There was not much I could do to help with actual stone-laying, so I made coffee and served cookies and jumped in when an extra hand helped.
I learned many things from Mike — that a wall must be as thick as it is tall. That crushed stone must fill in behind. That you add chinking with little stone bits to fill in holes afterwards. That the stones must lie horizontal. That straps are as strong as chains for lifting heavy things. That our local quarry runs into different veins of rock. The rock we tore down was from a vein of softer rock that was lovely for short walls as it became covered in moss, but not good for tall walls like mine.
After a couple of weeks, we had finished the wall, with curves and flowerbeds, which reminded me of the limestone walls of Croatia where my husband’s people were from. As Mike loaded up his tractor and headed off to the next project, I thought how lucky I was to have spent time with a true craftsman, building something so beautiful that might, despite Newton’s laws, last a very long time.
Micki Colbeck is a writer and naturalist and chairs the Strafford Conservation Commission. Write to her at mjcolbeck@gmail.com.