Years ago, while in the midst of my first read-through of A Song of Ice and Fire, I decided I was going to build a castle out of wood and stone. That plan remains intact, but I’ve started with smaller projects so that I can figure out how to become, with some iota of proficiency, a stone-mason.
Stop laughing.
For those who don’t actually know me, allow me to tell you that a stone-mason I am certainly not. Nor am I a handyman. The crowning pinnacle of my handiwork expertise is perhaps successfully installing a ceiling fan several months ago without experiencing any electrical shock; it even functioned on the first flip of the switch. A proud moment it was, indeed, when my ceiling fan burst to life and swirled cool air around the room for the first time. When I go into a hardware store, I would be hard-pressed to recognize most tools and describe their functionality.
When I was a little boy, probably eight or nine, my parents bought me a drill. In an unauthorized experiment, I destroyed several planks of fence around the backyard. That was the end of my powertool era as a young man.
As the weather has warmed after a particularly brutal winter in Vermont, I have finally decided to start working on building stuff with stones. I was recently at a book store with my roommate and in my hand was a book about stone-masonry projects. I told her I was going to build stuff with stones, and she laughed, as was entirely expected. My first project would be to build a stone walkway from the entrance of the garden to the driveway. Based on what I gleaned from the book, I needed big, flat stones. This idea was simple enough that I felt confident undertaking the challenge. I did not need any extra tools, except for a trowel, perhaps, to make things a bit easier. Essentially, I would dig a big hole, and play Tetris with several dozen rocks for a few hours. From this, a stone pathway would be born. And, so long as no one uprooted the stones for some reason or another, the pathway would remain for many years.
I wasn’t going to buy rocks either, because that’s just silly. So we planned a hike up Putney Mountain where I would bring along my rucksack and fill it with rocks. Big, flat rocks. Simple enough.
And so the next morning we went to Putney Mountain where we trod upon the paths and I stopped every couple of yards to put some rocks in my bag. The bag became inordinately heavy after about 1/4th of a mile, and we had about a 1.5 mile hike. It’s a short distance, but it felt like an eternity with a bag full of rocks smashing against my kidneys. I expected this prior to my rock collecting expedition and, remembering my goal, trod on through the buzzing clouds of mosquitoes and gnats while wearing my “It’s time to get austere!” face.
We went back to Brattleboro after the trek, and I figured now would be a good time to buy a trowel. A trowel would be cheap, and could help out quite a bit with laying down the stones. I put my bag of stones in the garage, and walked to the hardware store in Brattleboro to purchase a trowel.
I entered the hardware store and immediately found a trowel on a shelf. It was ten dollars.
The following is a list of thoughts which passed through my head as I spent an inappropriate amount of time staring at this simple tool, deciding whether or not I needed it:
“That’s basically just a metal triangle with a handle…”
“Do I really need a trowel right now? Am I quite that committed yet?”
“Purist stone masons don’t use many tools. Maybe I’ll be a purist.”
“What’s wrong with using my hands? I’ll just use my hands and get dirty. That’ll be cool.”
“Why is it called a trowel?”
I left the hardware store empty handed.
I walked across the street to a fine bookstore called Mystery on Main Street. I’ll spare you the details, but I spent thirty dollars on books without hesitation. I walked back home wondering if doing handiwork is something I’m really capable of, or if I should just accept that reading books through my thick bifocals is what I’m meant to do.
I arrived back home and decided to dive straight into the work. I lifted up about two inches of dirt in a rectangular area. I realized I had nowhere near enough rocks to make a real footpath that would extend from the garden to the driveway. Instead, I would create a rectangle of rocks and dirt that would be about one foot long and two feet wide at the picket-fenced entrance to the building’s garden. It would be a start. I had a beer, played some RL Burnside, and started laying rocks down while occasionally skittering away like a maniacal fairy from my meager work site when hornets buzzed by my face.
After finishing my work, I stood triumphantly and said to myself, “My name is Ozymandias, King of kings…” However, before finishing the aphorism from a poem recently made popular by the Breaking Bad series, I reminded myself that pride was not what Shelley had in mind when writing this little piece. My meager stone pathway would be eventually lost to the sands of time, just like the “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone … in the desert.” Nonetheless, I was still pretty proud of my work, even if it was just a start, and even if a dead British poet felt like reminding me that nothing is eternal.
If you haven’t already, I would recommend reading this work by Percy Bysshe Shelley; it’s a short sonnet.
I finished my beer, reveled in the sturdiness of the beginnings of a stone-footpath, and went inside to begin reading the books I had recently purchased.
I also thought to myself, “I’m going to need a shitload more stone to finish this footpath.”
Nader 