Persimmon Glen

I am blessed with rocks.

Where I live they are everywhere. You can't dig even the smallest hole without hitting one.  I pick them up all the time, and every time I look there is another. I love every single one of them and wish there were more.

In fact, I went to the river to get some for a pathway. I wanted the smooth round flat river rocks. Mine are very rough and would never work for a path, but I have plans for each and every one. They will be beautiful low walls and I'll make a nice barbeque grill out of them. They will work well for a root cellar and for foundation stones, flower beds and to line pathways. They're perfect for ringing a campfire and I may even have a fireplace built out of them one day. I'll go back to the river to get small smooth river rock to make my countertops. I may even have to buy some, because I want a bath with stone floors and walls.

Along one side of my property I have an old moss covered rock wall. Its about 500 feet long. It's falling down in places but it has so much charm. On the other side of the wall is about fifteen acres of pasture land.

A local fella came by one day and got to telling me some of the history of the area. It seems his great grandfather used to own that land before it was a pasture. Said they  wanted to plant an apple orchard and so every tree along with the stumps were removed with a pair of mules. It took many years and the ground was also full of rocks which they would stack up along the border. Every year erosion would cause more rocks to show themselves, so every year there were more rocks to pile up.

I understand from reading about how to build rock walls, that you should put the largest ones on top. From looking at all the rock walls around here, that seems to be true. Now this is a puzzle to me. Just exactly how did they get those great big ones on top of the little ones without making them fall? These walls around here are about 3 feet high. How did they do this?

I had one that had fallen from the wall and I needed to move it. It took three of us with a stout lever to get it off the ground enough to be able to wrap rope around and around it, then it was tied to a four wheel drive hitch and dragged about 20 feet and at that point the heavy duty rope broke. That sucker will sit there forever, cause I ain't movin it...

Eventually, he said, his family moved and took the apple trees with them. I look at my property and can't imagine how much fortitude it must have taken to remove every single tree along with the roots and the rocks and without a bulldozer to do the work for you, and to think, that has been done all over the world where people have settled in woodland areas.

Makes me think of the pyramids in Egypt, and dozens of other ancient monuments that were built by human sweat.

I think those are truly monuments to what will power can do. When you set your mind to it, you can move a mountain....