How can we create beauty without a sense of wonder ? How could anyone think of dry stone walling as just a job? How could someone only come to the craft merely as a platform for competition and just a way of getting ahead. And yet I worked with a man who used to think that way for years
As much as I tried to encourage him he refused to approach walling as an art, to pause and ponder the magic, the wonder of it.
He told me that being looked up to by other wallers was all he wanted from walling, all that he looked to accomplish through striving with dry stone, and hopefully, to eventually become the best known waller in the country.
I have to respect that. I also have to sigh.
I think the art and joy and spontaneity and yes the wonder of working with stone can sometimes be lost when we take ourselves, and what others think of us, too seriously. There is a magical potential waiting in every stone we pick up to forget all that. Stones will always invite us to just wonder, and basically, to lighten up.
