Well Researched Books about Stone Walls??

With great thanks to James and Mary Gage,

Allen in NH and Rich in VT
for inspiration

    I was thinking about stone walls this morning (“Oh what – for a change?” I can hear you say), reading a bit about them (in the section on “Historic” Stone Structures) on a web version of a “Go To Book” on Stone Structures of the Northeastern United States, noting it doesn’t take too long to do so because it mostly says: “The subject of stones walls has been documented in several well researched books. Rather than reiterate the materials in those books, this webpage with supplement previously published materials with new information not covered elsewhere.”

 {http://www.stonestructures.org/html/stone_walls.html}

     I wince a little, despite my great admiration for the independent research of the blog authors, because there’s very few “well researched” books on New England stone walls out there –and because the term “historic” implies that the only real history of the area begins somewhere in the early 1500s when Verrazano sails into Narragansett Bay (I think) and makes a few notes about what he did on his summer vacation (I think – may be it was a report for some King or Queen or something).

     Well now, when I say “very few well researched books,” I mean just that since all I’ve ever really seen is a repetition (regurgitation) of the same old stuff that’s based on assumption and conjecture that’s based on the word of the early Puritans we sometimes call Pilgrims who called themselves Saints, I think. “They have no bounds,” one of the Puritan leaders says of the Indigenous People whose land he is interested in acquiring at no cost, just before passing a Fence Law to describe exactly what sort of “boundary” is a legal boundary or boundaries or “bounds.”

     There’s a lot of other myths about Indigenous People passed around and sent back to European financial backers during this time of land acquisition and righteous reasons, “They have no art,” “They worship the Devil (who the Indigenous People had never actually heard about up until then), and a whole bunch of stuff that makes up most of what you read it your old History Textbook that was based on your Dad’s old History Textbook that was based on his Dad’s History Textbook.

   But, back to this morning, I scroll down toward the Snake Wall image I’m looking for, when I see some “Lace Walls” in some photos that were taken in some blueberry fields on a Blue Job Mountain in New Hampshire, and of course I’ve got to look for some more having just had a long conversation with two different people about blueberry fields in the past week.

   I’m momentarily distracted by a possible or probable Turtle Effigy/Petroform (“Oh, what – for a change?” I hear you say again.):

And I have to do this (“Oh, what – for a change?” I hear you say once again.):

(Left) Photo from: https://nhgardensolutions.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/17-erratic.jpg

(Right) “Cartoon-like Erratic Turtle Thoughts” that we could argue about.

    And yeah, there it is again, that “historic” bias sticking it’s head out from the hard shell of American History, telling us that Indians/Native Americans/Indigenous People of the area just weren’t capable or motivated to move or build or work with stone (except for those exceptionally beautiful arrowheads and stuff). Still looking for the blueberries, a couple really fine images of stone walls snaking across the modern Cultural Landscape come my way:

   I read: “Seeing this old stonework always gets me thinking about the people who once lived on top of this hill,” and then “What a job clearing this land must have been for a man with nothing but an axe. Just as daunting would have been having to get rid of all the stumps and stones before he could plow. It must have been near back breaking labor from sunup to sundown. I’ve cut trees with an axe and built stone walls, so it’s no wonder to me that they died so young. I think they must have simply worn their bodies out.”

    And I think about that, recall what I know about those Indigenous People who were living here for a much longer period of time, firsthand accounts of Indigenous People who girdled trees and with a ring of fire felled trees – and all the rest of that Native American use of fire that is briefly condensed and in no way complete here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_use_of_fire (“Oh, what – for a change?” I hear you say again.):

   And of course I also think about the protective Spirit Gitaskog, aka Gtaskog, Kitaskog, Kita-skog, Keeta-skog, Gitaskog, Giciskog, Gichi-skog, and Msaskog, Msa-skog, Tatoskog, Tatoskok, Pita-skog, Peeta-skog, Peetaskog, as he might be locally known in whatever part of New Hampshire this is (“Oh, what – for a change?” I hear you say again), copying and pasting the names found at http://www.native-languages.org/gitaskog.htm.

     Looking closely at one of those photos, I just have to do this (“Oh, what – for a change?” I hear you say yet again):

  The blog author writes: “I’ve built a few stone walls in my time so I know how much work went into these walls. Add to that cutting all the trees with an axe and pulling stumps and plowing the forest floor with a team of horses and it just boggles the mind. I suppose, when your very existence depends on it, you can do just about anything.”

    Well, you know that very brief period of “historic” time isn’t the only time when humans modified this landscape. It’s barely 3% of the total time humans have been there. Is it even humanly possible to build the great number of “stone walls” of the Northern United States (of America) in that time period? Especially when you consider the Indigenous-made stonework in the Northern United States of Mexico?

    My consulting associate Sherlock Stones often says something like “How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth, despite what it says in all the well researched stone wall literature?”

    Are we looking at the work of a few hundred years or the work of a few thousand years – possibly even longer? Are these “walls” markers of that Euro-American Post-Colonial Cultural Landscape or of a far older Indigenous Sacred Ceremonial Stone Landscape, later re-purposed or “acculturated, even in the (not really) well researched literature?

     Someone comments on the blog: “I always think that a stone wall in a forest is a sad sight as it represents a lot of labour gone to waste.”

   The author responds: “That’s true. Even though most of these walls were built simply as a way to get rid of all of the stones they kept plowing up, it was still a lot of work.”

    I think, on the other hand, about the negative impact of European style “plow” agriculture on the sustainable Indigenous methods of land management, striving for Balance and providing Abundance, Indigenous Forest Gardens, Gardens in the Desert Southwest and even beyond North America and Central America, Great Ancient Cities with even more remarkable Indigenous Stonework in South America (“Oh, what – for a change?” I hear you say one more time).

And then:

     I chuckle as I think: “Other Garden Solutions,” in fact...