The Rural Voice, 1991-10, Page 38NOTEBOOK
STONES WHICH SPEAK
A LARGE STONE PILE SPEAKS VOLUMES A►.BOU'T THE BACKI3R.EAlcING
WORK OF PREVIOUS GENERATIONS AS THEY STRUGGLEDT
OUT A LANG IN A SOMETIMES HOSTILE COUNTRYSI
By Art White
For her birthday one year, 1 gave my wife, Alice, $100
worth of bulldozing. Her hillside garden needed contouring
and the foundation for our new addition needed backfill, but
first on the operator's list was to level a decades -old dumpsite
which obstructed our panoramic view of Lake Beeler, which
bounds our property on the north.
The broad blade easily skimmed off generations of rusted
cans and assorted non-burnables, but was slowed to a costly
pace by a mound of melon -size round stones, upon which the
dozer tread slipped along in mark time as if on so many ball
bearings .. .
"There's a lot of work in this pile," said the dozer man, as
I saw my $100 meter away. Then I realized that he was
referring to the story within the mound, for these stones were
the sum of what it took to clear the field above. This nearly
immovable mass told of the never-ending diligence of those
families who worked this land before us.
The rubbish -free mound still stands
within our lakeview but no longer as an
eyesore. Those stones "speak" to us now
as part of the history of the efforts it took
to clear and work our modest acreage.
Robert Frost poetically illustrated the
relationship between good neighbours
and well -mended fences. Those were
rock fences, of course, made from the
clearage of the fields they demarked.
Rock fences are a realtor's plus when it
comes to selling expensive country
estates. They "say" so much more of gentry and class than do
chain link or masonry. To me they say more of those who made
them .. .
Half of our property is bounded by Beeler Lake, half is
marked by lines of piled stones (piled on our side of the line,
as was the rule). Even in the woodland (which is the greater
portion of our 113 acres), a more or less straight line of knee-
high stone wall charts the unmistakable boundary of what is
our woods (and not our woods).
In places, the stones are topped with decaying tamarack
poles upon which are still strung a couple of strands of rusted
wire. That, too, tells me something of how farmsteaders coped
with Nova Scotia's tree -covered, nutrient -poor hinterland.
They gave their stock as much range as they could fence, even
if it was mostly in the woods.
In our woods, there are several remnants of rock wall and
rusted wire smack dab in the middle of nothing but trees,
making Alice and I wonder what these foreowners were doing
out there. It was woods then, wasn't it?
Boulders for beaches is another story of the hardy and
industrious people who came before us as users of this land.
Lake Beeler was this area's swimming place dating back as
far as people can remember, and it is today. Neighbours come
from all over to swim in "our" lake (at least they use our beach
on which to sun, oil, and entertain themselves),
Running along the shoreline, where the downhill field
abuts the lake, is a 200 meter buffer of boulders, some the size
of small cars, most girting the same dimensions as the oxen or
horses it took to drag them there.
Think of the digging and prying it took to unearth, then
move one of these ton -size boulders —even if it was downhill.
Heavily harnessed horses or oxen, lathered up and excited
by the prospects of pulling at their traces to the shouting of their
teamster, were stopped dead in their huge tracks by those
unmovable granite anchors. The men and boys would re-
position the lever poles and dig away enough of the rocky soil
for sheer animal power to at last overcome inertia and
adhesion, and lift those behemoths from
their mother niches, sending them on their
way, slowly at first, rolling with
cumbered pace safely past the animal(s),
gathering speed and enormous power
until they bedded themselves among their
own kind there along the shore.
Myers Milner, my nearest neighbour,
remembers participating in the thrill of
that event as a boy, nearly four score years
ago. "We dug out a lot of dirt to budge the
big ones," he told me. "Some were as
wide across as a man is tall. It was
something to see them rolling down the field on their own ...
kind of scary for the one who worked the horses. Everyone
worried about the horses ..."
"It must have felt good to put a big one down," I said.
"Down was only half done," he said, "Next ya hadta fill the
hole!"
Boulders are also to be seen off shore in Lake Beeler,
beneath the place they were piled by inventive men whose
teams dragged them out onto the ice in the dead of winter
during those years when snow -cover was light.
"Then they'd race on the lake for fun," said Myers. "The
horses were already wearing corks, so the footing was sure..
You can't fall off in one of those Belgiums — unless you're
drunk — so everybody'd get a turn. It's a mile or more to the
other end of the lake from your place. 0, we had a great time
at the races. 'Work then play' they used to say."
Old people around here say that the "old people" did a lot
more things for themselves (meaning their parents and
grandparents). The stones say that as well.
There's an old house foundation on our property. It's stone,
"Mostly these (founda-
tions) were field stones the way
they found them — cleverly
matched and custom constructed
into plumb basement walls, well
lines, chimneys, fences, and
embankments."
34 THE RURAL VOICE