Stone Work: Reflections on Serious Play & Other Aspects of Country Life

One man's venture into masonry as he labors to build a stone wall also evokes reflections on the abundance of grace and beauty found within nature and the possibilities inherent in stillness

Although Jerome ( Truck ) admits initially that building a stone boundary wall on his property in Massachusetts was "about the dumbest piece of work I could conceive," he soon discovered the elemental satisfactions of maneuvering tons of stone into a monumental yet simple form. Through his year-long task, described here, the urban expatriate recovered his sensory instincts and established connections with the natural world. The patience and painstaking attention required by stone work serve Jerome equally well in his wry, often metaphysical musings on physics and physiology. How our bodies perform, how nature works, the mechanics of moving rocks, all fascinate the author. And the closer he stays to the suspenseful building process, the more authentic are his reflections ("Stone, wood, glass, metal, mud, any material, any combination, it's the fitting together that turns work into pleasure, turns tedium into trance"). Yet admirers of more Thoreauvian accounts of country life may be disappointed by Jerome's penchant for physics over pastoral pleasures, and his eventual abandonment of the stone wall as a "dilettantish thing" may strike readers as unkind treatment of a stately metaphor.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This is much more than a chronicle of a year spent living in the country. The author uses the slow, solitary work of building a stone wall on his property in the Massachusetts Berkshires as a backdrop to explore his relationship with the natural world. His preoccupation with mechanical competency and the "physics of things," be it athletic exertion or the hoisting of a car's engine, changes as he gains a new awareness of sensory life. ("Riches, riches, everywhere, just for the paying of attention.") His contemplation also leads to an understanding of feelings about his father and stepfather, both dead yet close at hand, as the author goes about gathering field stones and fitting them into place. Highly recommended, and likely to be as important as Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek ( LJ 5/1/) and Tracy Kidder's House ( LJ 8/85).
- Douglas G. Birdsall, North Dakota State Univ. Libs., Fargo
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.