Preparing to jump right in to International Naked Gardening Day today

“Perhaps indeed he or she to whom the free exhilarating ecstasy of nakedness in Nature has never been eligible (and how many thousands there are!) has not really known what purity is— nor what faith or art or health really is.”

–Walt Whitman

Rock enroled students.

We are all students, oft times, travelling over bridges we haven't made yet. The knowledge of what is known, and not known, passes both ways. We start from a place where we overlook the obvious and cross over to where we begin to understand the intuitive - all the time never, blocking  the flow of continuity - but simply accommodating the course of nature . The stones are strong supporters of such multi-layered education. The universe is the place where all matter, and all that matters, is (are?) compressed into the arc of enlightenment .  

The first week of May is the best time to build bridges.

The dimensions for the centring, which will support our next dry stone bridge, have been carefully worked out, and the lines where it will be going, are shown here in green. It will be built by seven students in the next five days.

May 1st. What a lovely setting. You can just see Nels standing where we are going to be building the bridge this week.

Build it, and they will come

We recently created this catchment area on the property to collect water from a year round spring  . The rains came and created a new pond , and then the geese came and created, a mess, no no , created a beautiful photo opportunity,

Beknownst or Unbeknownst?

Is the thing you created based on something original?

The answer must be ‘Yes’

Since it is either, something you just made up,

or just a copy, (unbeknownst to you, perhaps) 

of what had previously existed.

That’s because the word ‘original’ can mean

‘What was there from before’

Or conversely,

‘Something entirely new’

Cool Moves

Walking Assembly from matter design on Vimeo.


It's a pity these are not big stones, rather than concrete. Big stones love to be moved, just as much as the small ones. Big stones love to be shaped too. Sometimes they have to be shaped into spheres in order to get them where they need to be. When they get there, they can be shaped again into big cubes or large steps or huge standing stones like the Ring of Brodgar in Scotland. How else could they have got them there?


.

Long ago is not that long ago

Laser Level

The laser level makes figuring out how high and how flat this stone pond catchment pond we’re creating is to be. It’s much easier than doing it by eye.

Just have to make sure you don’t leave it in the pond after it fills up.

Symbiotic Synergy

A wall of indigenous ‘rough rock’ meets an incoming ‘round rock’ migration, along the line of insight, and the angle of repose. One is planar, and perhaps some what plainer. The other is not complaining, easy going. Taking time to be well rounded, well traveled. 
The one’s contours of caring and caressing accumulate and bubble, while the other’s flush geometries look on with welcome face and both participants enjoy appearing in various concepts of permanence. 
We relish the patterns of commonality and difference. Together and separate, examples of the same thing. The unity of differences. The complexity of oneness. The undulating non-duality. 

Walking Away With It

It seems Andy Goldsworthy is pursuing a variation of a very clever 'walking wall' idea that wallers from Canada (and Britain and the States) gathered together to actually build much earlier here in Toronto, back on the night of September 29th 2012. 

See https://thinking-stoneman.blogspot.com/2012/10/nuit-blanch-have-you-ever-heard-arch.html

The idea, originally conceived by Evan Oxland and Akira Inman, included many other exciting components, including an arch, professional graffiti art, music, and a powerful light show - all these elements accompanying the process of the wall being assembled and reassembled, with stones taken from the back of the wall and moved to the front, so that it walked  slowly east along Queen Street, during a fabulous night of Nuit Blanche festivities.

Metamorphic Rock

Looking at the undeniably rocky terrain ahead , I’m desperately hoping the earth somehow is getting poised for a much needed, yet totally unimaginable cosmic ‘phase shift’🦋

Tunnel Vision

There is a story here. Can you guess what it its before looking at the photo below?  The story is about a perceived need for expediency.  It's someone's decision to actually think the look of urgency and inconsistent workmanship in one section might not impede the overall perception of wonder and mystery of the whole.   

This is a story of us thinking we always need to 'help' mother nature. It betrays a frantic eagerness to make a natural wonder 'last' – to resist change – to fix what isn't broken – to think that permanency is of a higher value than aesthetic . We decide that we know best, and see no value in vulnerability or the possibility of impermanence – that safety and convenience are more important than the humbling awesomeness of reality.

One man's garbage can is another man's "yes I can".

I came across a photo recently of me standing beside what would have been essentially my first attempt at building a nearly full-scale dry-laid arch entranceway.  Leaning on that temporary arch of glacial field stones, assembled those many years ago, as part of likely the first dry stone wall 
demonstration ever at a Highland Games event in Canada I remember the strange confidence I had felt that my arch idea was going to work. I had never done one before.

I hadn't planned to build one that weekend at the Uxbridge Games. It was supposed to be just a wall demonstration. But by the end of Saturday I'd already used all ten tons of random stone to build a sample length of wall. 

I could either take it down and rebuild it on the next day, or try to think of something completely different. The idea of knocking a hole in the middle and using the freed up stones to build an arch occurred to me as I was driving to the Elgin Park that Sunday morning.

I had to think fast. Next to my DSWAC site there was an empty plastic trash barrel which I decided to 'borrow' for the arch form. I secured it in place with pieces of wood so that the top of the barrel laying on its side would support an arch opening of stones you could conceivably duck your head and walk under.

The arch project attracted way more onlookers that afternoon than my efforts the previous day trying to get people excited about merely building a wall 'without mortar'!
There's nothing like the risk of failure to get people thinking about gravity and physics and the wonderful mystery of arch construction. 

When the form was removed there were cheers of excitement and congratulations. I was elated and relieved that the ad lib demonstration had been such a success.
After the crowd had inspected the arch and all the questions answered and comments addressed, the people dispersed.
People came and admired it the rest of the day.

A fellow came over later in the day, and tossing the wrapper of his ice cream bar into the plastic barrel, walked over to me marvelling at my lowly arch and asked how on earth I had been able to manage to position the stones over the opening all at the same time in order to make it. 
I pointed to the garbage can.

Gneiss Breaker

Spatial Context

Conflicting Elements.

One stone, just one, in an entire wall of stones of similar material, has begun to crumble and break up into gravel.

My hands ask the question. Which is it that causes such things to happen.

Is it the drying of sun, or the dampness (from the lack of sunlight) that causes the decomposition?
The universal question is...

Is it the light or the darkness that creates the shadow? 

The Balance Beam

Stone balancing involves beaming perfectly still.

Outside In

Geode To A Wall

Your every stone

A crystalline

Of Self - Contained

Potential 

Your inner circle

A patterned cave

Of Self - Enclosed

Wonder

Your outer sides

A modesty

Of Masked -Wrapped

Splendour

Your every shape

A mirroring

Of star-structured

Handiwork.

Your inner verse

A cloistered 

Super nova’d

Cosmos.

A new challenge

Klein Bottle Tomb Vault

How about an upside-down inside-out arch entrance-way?

Upside Down and Inside Out

Thinking about gravity, and how when it’s working best, seems not to be there .

Wall to Ceiling

In referring to Sean Donnelley's latest creation, Eric Landman said "He's turned the dry stone world upside down!"

Having been given a Chalmers Arts Fellowship grant through the Ontario Arts Council grant to allow him to be able explore and execute some of his design ideas over the next year (with stones he will be creatively 'reassembling' in his workshop) Sean has indeed opened up a whole new dimension.

And what better man for the job? He's young and talented and has been pushing the boundaries of the craft already with his many inspiring walling projects. See The Wave

I went to visit Sean and see the upside-down wall yesterday and was suitably impressed. I had a good look at it from top to bottom. 

It has all the correct proportions and features of a proper dry laid wall, with the added feature of it being carefully battered and built in reverse, to create a wonderful feeling of whimsy and irony.

I'm excited about what Sean will come up with next. 

Sean is a professional certified instructor and has an advanced standing with the Dry Stone Wall Association of GB DSWAGB . Have a look at his website  sdstone 

I'm thinking building upside-down may well be the jumping off point for creating all sorts of new and unusual structures of stone. 

I think I'll explore some of the possibilities tomorrow.

Rolling Dog.

Yesterday Farley and I returned to see the dry stone arch we built at Mount Pleasant, Ontario, fourteen years ago. He had never seen it.

Farley was so knocked out by the stone arch that he fell down and rolled around in the snow.

The week before the students and I built it, we were busy gathering rocks from the hilly farm property and were pretty excited about doing one of the first public arch installations in Ontario. 

Back then, July 14, 2005, to be exact, the morning before the weekend we built it, I remember reading the headline in the Globe and Mail - 

'STONES COME TO MOUNT PLEASANT' 

I was delighted and a little bit surprised that the Toronto paper was covering the event. 

http://www.canadacool.com/location/toronto-rolling-stones/

Of course, I soon realized it was referring to those 'other' stones who had arrived to practice somewhere around Mount Pleasant and Davisville in Toronto for their upcoming 2005 North American tour

Anyway, this week I read those 'rolling' stones will roll in to North America again for another big tour in 2019. Unfortunately they won't perform in Canada this time.

I am pleased to say the famous stones in our arch never left Canada, nor did any of them roll down from their Mount Pleasant perch. The rocks we grouped together there to form the arch, those years ago, are still continuing to put on a good performance. 

It's kind of good to know that both rock groups are aging so well.

Surface now-ness

I may separate stone in different ways, but no matter which way I split it, the two new faces, which having been invisible before, (with particles in no particular relation to each other, or having any correlation, while within) now become visibly connected. At the splitting of time, two new surfaces suddenly appear. 

With every such opening, the chronology appears different but the ‘now’ remains the same. 

It is always a mirror image of itself.

Stonehatch

Stones have been laid upon stones since the beginning of time. We see evidence of this in every land and continent. These ancient stone structures only last because they are made of stone, a material more impervious to change than any other readily found substance on earth. The observance of important dates and events in the heavens are measured and anticipated because of a most ancient reliance on this unchanging nature of stone. We would do well to recognize this archaic association and learn to appreciate the continual relationship between the seasons and man made stone structures of the past.

Our perspective, our well being, our inspiration and hope ‘hinges’ upon our being able to perceive change. The very change that stones resist, allows us to see ‘difference of time’ for what that it really is. Civilizations have erected austere and wonderful monuments, stone edifices elevating the concept of ‘change’ to that which is celebrated, rather than feared. The megalithic ‘standing stones’ of Britain and Ireland are ‘understandable’, if only for this reason. As we contemplate the jutting of large stones silhouetted in some lonely place, we become aware of the distance that change alone has put between who we are and who we were, not just as individuals but collectively. It is not at all incongruous to consider that, apart from change, everything else about us has stayed the same.

It is this same predictability, this equivalent ‘sameness’, that makes it self- evident that wherever there are stones, there will be people who will align them together into structures, and for no apparent reason. Who has not at some time, while wandering through the countryside, discovered an interesting man made configuration of stones. Upon discovering such an ordered pile of stones resting ‘immobile’, one upon another, we ourselves may be inexplicably ‘moved’. Though our experience is personal, there is a experimental knowing, which is universal and suggests a uniquely common identity. The single enduring property of those monuments of stone, though motionlessness and seemingly inert, becomes the catalyst for a variety of creative human responses. Our shared humanity seems somehow locked in the past; a past of stone. We realize that we are not only ‘here and now’, but we are all so very far away, and very taken back, by time.

Leviathan bones, lost relics, latent fossils tell very little of the story. It is the carefully stacked stones themselves that speak volumes to the human psyche. They read us like an open book. These hard lifeless(?) stones tell us we have been here before, because we are here now. And by the hardness of reason, we realize there is very little distinction. It is as though we have discovered our own unique remnants in some great prehistoric Thesaurus. Contained within this revelation is the possibility that we are all actually on the same page! Not only are we having ‘our present’, but we also " had ‘archaic’ and ‘dated’ as well ", thus closing the distance between preceding and proceeding moments of time in space.
Similar to Roget’s original intentions for ordering words by definition, rather than alphabetically, our propensity to move (and be moved by) stones in their various configurations and constructions, defines who we are. The grouping experience is merely the making of constructive connections between like concepts. Rather than feebly clutching to the randomness of our surroundings, we are recognizing the solid associations these stones provide.

Stone configurations act as our GPS receiver, to help us find our location, in much the same way they have always done throughout the ages. Our ancestors erected monumental landmarks to connect the dots for us. They laboriously drafted detailed charts of the stars in the night sky, quarried, shaped and maneuvered huge stones into position, for us to know, not so much where we are, but who we are. The kind of effort and extravagance historically distant peoples infused into their self-imposed undertakings in stone, may seem completely illogical to us now, locked in our technological , chronological universe, but the importance of what they left behind, though very much a mystery, is surely not wasted. The significance lies in how connected we still are to stones, not how old the structures are or even how on earth they were made. And it doesn’t matter much if they are enormous ancient landmarks or comparatively recent structures of free standing stone, our response as human beings is fundamentally the same. It seems that something profoundly important 'hinges' on our being able to understand why this happens.

Rolling along...

To choose to carry on

How could I choose to leave even one behind, from such a unique collection of compelling emblems of earth, which against all odds, my eye alone only observed, causing me to stoop down in my journeys, to pluck them individually from obscurity? Shall I now agree to stoop to some impoverished regulatory compliance to abandon them, rather than dutifully transport them, all together in my carry-on, to a new honoured place in another kingdom far far away? 

Birth and death of a section of dry stone wall

Archattacher

Old and Wrinkly

I know that section of wall like the back of my hand.

What stones are like.

The colourful pattern of living material that grows on stone is ‘lichen-elegy’. It remembers for us the merits of stones we might have long forgotten.

Evil or no?

I fear the wall is but a shadow of Death Valley.

Time Lapsing Lichen

Imagine if you had the time and were patient enough to watch lichen growing on rocks.

It’s what we do.

No need to remind us. We’re always watching for them. 

Flat to the fireplace

Think about it. If you we’re thinking about remounting that ‘flat to the wall’ back up there, after youve had that newly-built,‘real stone’ fireplace put in, what’s the likelihood you’d find anything better to watch on the screen anyway, than the beautiful stonework behind it? Okay,you might need to see some antlers on the TV too.

As high as we’ve gone so far

Here’s the outside or the hexagonal temple (hexatemple) so far.

Below shows the inside scoop.

Photos by Sean Adcock

I ❤️ Rocks

Big ones, small ones

Fat ones, tall ones

Heavy ones, light ones

Dull ones, bright ones 

Weighty rocks, hard to lift

Pebbly ones, that fingers sift

Flat ones and ugly ones  

Smooth ones and rugged ones

Square ones, round ones

Tossed ones, found ones

Faceless or faceted'

Time worn ones, or just blasted

Polished ones and precious stones

Fosiled ones with tiny bones

Layered ones with veins and stripes

Building stones of different types

Perfect ones for building walls

Or awkward ones to use at all  

Boulders stretching out for many miles

or gathered stones in tiny piles

Always do I think about 'em

And what 

would I do 

without them.

There'd be no shores, no mountain tops

No cliffs, no canyons, no stone outcrops

No quarry yards with tons of stone

Just emptiness, a rockless home 

There'd be no stuff to make concrete

To build our buildings and our streets

No beach with smooth stones fun to find

No gems or minerals to be mined

Fields and forests would all be bare

No lichen covered moss rocks there

How do I love rocks? Let me count the ways.

I love them to their depth and breadth and height

A stone can reach where nought else might

For they end up being such ideal shapes.

I love them in great Teutonic plates

Most quiet forms, that speak their wisdom thus

I love them freely, and love how they love us

I love them purely, in tumbled mass

I love them in the way they last and last

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I love them with a love I seemed to lose

With my hurried ways---and misspent youth

I love them in their simple life --- and, if they choose,

I shall but somehow put some to even better use.

How shale I compare thee?

Looking round the Corner

Focusing on the hexagonal corner being constructed (between two future arches of the structure, yet to be built) it is clear the contrast of not just the materials, but how they’re used, achieves a very pleasing visual. The formal granite quoins are stately, somewhat impersonal and have a kind of monumental poise. The basalt column with its unusual length and apparent natural geometry is the hexagonal antithesis of the granite cubes. The rhythm and the rugged horizontal pattern of the mica schist softens and humanizes the two. 
I’m just hoping the balance can be maintained as we get higher and likely have to add a fourth material to the mix

Taking Shape

We start to fill in the shape of the dry stone hexagonal structure now with quoins we’ve dressed from reclaimed San Francisco granite curbs, inter-fingered with Sydney Peak mica schist flagstone.

stonewart

Stonewart seems like a pretty good name for this type of appalling approach to working with stone.  You're supposed to work with stone, not against it. These stones were crying out not to be used this way. The fact that they were trapped in this column should have been a warning to us. We were trying out a new place in town to have lunch. The food was awful there. I think this is just another example of how the universe is always trying to make contact with us and send helpful clues all along the way, if we just pay attention.

Basalt of the earth men.

The basalt columns are now lowered into position. These will be the six corners of the dry stacked hexagon structure. (The granite quoins which were precisely stacked in position, had to be disassembled and neatly stacked to the sides so as not be in the way of maneuvering in the basalt columns.)

The proper measuring of the columns so that the bottoms were cut square was essential. Then each column had to be skilfully rigged with sturdy straps and lifted into place in its proper orientation. These silent sentry columns final placement depended on a crack team of rock stars. Mark R, Sean A and Shawn K. The Gradall operated by Peter M. did the necessary usual amazingly precise lifts.

Sean A complains a lot.  Please caption this one.

Moving in

After the concrete is cured enough, we can move on to the pad and measure out the dimensions and permanently scratch in the footprint of the structure’s hexagon shape with a nail. 
Next, the first of the granite quoins we’ve cut and dressed are ceremoniously moved into place, either side of the arch openings that we’ve marked out. 
This is a pretty auspicious occasion for these chunky fellas. Who can blame them for looking so excited. Because really,  there isn’t a newly shaped building stone I know of that wouldn’t love to have his very own pad.