2 titles on Stone Walls

Stone by Stone: the Magnificent History in New England’s Stone Walls

New York: Walker, 2002

Exploring Stone Walls: A Field Guide to New England’s Stone Walls

New York: Walker, 2005

Set in Stone

New England’s stone walls are a ubiquitous feature of its landscape. As with anything we grow accustomed to, it is easy enough to stop noticing or pay little heed. But these books provide a fresh view with their fascinating mix of geology, history, environmental science and cultural anthropology. Thorson combines his professorial ability to explain things in depth with the art of being a good storyteller.

In Stone by Stone, Thorson explains how the Puritans, arriving in what came to be called New England, felt some confidence in their attempt to settle there because, despite myriad challenges, the landscape was a familiar one, reminiscent of the one they’d left behind. Stone, for example, was not seen as an obtrusive element of a harsh and alien environment. Instead, it looked like home. And as it turns out, stone on each side of the Atlantic — in England and New England — originated from the same mountain range they once shared in the Paleozoic Era, when both were part of the same continent, Pangaea.

On the other hand, Native Americans of the northeastern woodlands did not have a tradition of using stone, except in minor ways such as building fire pits and burial mounds. Unlike indigenous Americans in the Southwest, they constructed no pyramids, pueblos, mounds or extensive irrigated fields. Instead, the forest soil of New England, pre-European discovery, was allowed to form, grow, and thicken undisturbed. Only when the newcomers felled trees to clear that land did the soil begin to degrade and erode, ultimately offering up the stones until then deeply buried — by at least two feet.

Stone walls were not a part of Colonial settlements during most of the 1600s. Puritan settlements were communal in nature, and agricultural lands as well as residential clearings required no demarcation. Wood fencing, made from a plentiful supply of lumber, was used for animal enclosures. It was late in that century when farmers became more independent, spreading out into more remote areas and embracing a more self-sufficient lifestyle. As families moved into the uplands further out from the initial lowland settlements, they began to convert lush forests into pasture land, uncovering stony till. As Thorson puts it, the shift represented not only the beginning of stone wall construction, but of American attitudes that would ultimately lead to the Revolutionary War.

The first stone walls were not primarily in service of agriculture or animals. As private ownership of land became the norm, property was measured and marked. Respecting boundaries kept peace in a community. Did the settlers know that even as they endeavored to build walls strong enough to stand for centuries, they were also exemplifying some of America’s moral values? As with the walls, some have lasted and seem invincible, while others have been damaged or have disappeared. Thorson advocates that the remaining stone walls of New England need to be respected, tended and left in place. Without them, not only would a chain reaction of deleterious environmental effects drastically alter the land and waters, but we would lose history and relationship, a way humans have woven themselves into the landscape.

Thorson’s field guide, Exploring Stone Walls, offers a handy companion to ventures around New England in order to observe them in situ. There are lessons to be learned, and maybe Thorson’s quote from a Robert Frost poem (“A Star in a Stoneboat”) alludes to that:

Some may know what they seek in school and church,

I must go measuring stone walls, perch on perch.