Jason Hoffman kindly picked me up at the Edinburgh airport two days ago after my flight back to Canada was cancelled. Jason is a very good waller who, because of this fortuitous delay, I was finally able to meet in person, through we had already started to get to know each other via facebook. He runs an impressive walling company and an equally impressive website both called Stone Inspired
The walls he drove me to look at in and around Edinburgh on Thursday were numerous and varied though a bit difficult to actually see. Over a foot of snow covered many of the dry stone features and terraces we visited. One recently completed project Jason showed me was a lovely sweeping-curved wall he and his helper Andy had built at Easter Briech ( a popular Scotish vacation spot visited during spring perhaps?) near his home in Livingston Scotland.
Jason can be seen here 'sweeping' it again.
A few years ago a very good walling book came out about a fairly well known British waller by the name of Steven Allen entitled In There Somewhere by David Griffiths . The reference presumably alludes to wallers being able to find and assemble the right stones from a random pile rocks to create the very wall that wants to be built. It occurred to me that looking at the prominent ridge of snow Jason was showing me I might just be able to believe there was a wall 'in there somewhere' and judging by pictures of other walls I'd seen on his website it was pretty cool.
