My Stone Walls

When I bought my Cape Cod ranch house in 2004, I didn’t know about all the rocks and stones and pebbles underneath the crabgrass and moss that covered my new backyard.
I’d find 550 of them. Yep, 550 rocks found in one spring and summer, as I dug out the grass and moss. I flung great heaps of sandy soil onto what would become a six-foot long horizontal line back by the shed.
I hauled rocks – some as big as the computer console I had then, some as small as teakettles. Old metal pails – I had seven- I filled them with pebbles. I was making a stone wall, by gosh.
I drove around the villages that make up the Town of Yarmouth and found, hitherto barely noticed, stone walls everywhere. And I mean everywhere.Stone walls are all along Route 6A. They once served, some still do, as property borders built in Colonial times. They’re in the woods and behind and in front of houses. They’re not tall, not fancy. Every stone wall looks old. Some have moss and weeds between the stones. Some have shrubs in the crevices. Stones in the walls have smooth edges. You can push some of the stones around. Others you can’t budge. It’s as if whoever placed a rock surrounded by smaller rocks meant it to never be moved.
My stone wall was coming along by June. It was hard work. My knees were better then. I’d studied stone walls and tried to replicate how the never-to-be-known builders knew how to keep the stones from toppling. I ventured out after rainstorms to see how the rain had affected the sturdy stones. Slippery when soaked. Quickly dried by early summer sun.
I was tempted. Sorely tempted. I wanted stones from stone walls that were on private properties. The houses on these properties were not lived in. How did I know this? Unlit after dark. Blinds drawn. Unkempt yards. I’d cherish their rocks, take care of them.
Every property is private unless it’s public. And then it’s owned by the town. Did I dare scoff any rocks for my growing wall? Would it be stealing? At a park? A beach? Forested land? Along a roadside? A building site? Would it be OK to snatch a stone or two or three from under a fence, behind a market, at the bottom of a jetty, in a flowerpot outside a restaurant, beside an old mailbox in a parking lot?
I succumbed. I would probably have taken more stones from more places if a policeman hadn’t come to my house and showed me a photo of me taking a gallon-sized rock from a gully in a park.
From then on I was careful where I got my pebbles and stones and rocks.
My wall has stood proud over the years. It has weathered hurricanes, blizzards and the infringement of bittersweet and dandelions. How dare they? But they do.
Now I have three other smaller stone walls, not walls exactly. I call them piles. They seem to like being together, those stones and rocks, fit with pebbles. Never mind where my treasures come from. I’ve convinced myself to never mind. They have a home here in my yard.