The experiment continues...

I wanted to have this newsletter done for May 1st, but deadlines are no fun, esp. during #quarantine. There are only about 10 of you reading this anyway, so thanks for taking interest, and I hope you'll enjoy it.

Qaurantine has got me balancing stones.

When we bought 5.5 acres on a mountain 11 years ago and started excavating the site, our excavator said there was more stone than soil. At the time he lived on the mountain too so he was used to it, but I don't think he enjoyed the wear and tear it did to his machine.

In the 20s and 30s, this mountain was clear cut, using the wood for fuel, and to make pasture land for the sheep/wool industry. We have a few stone walls left on our site from this time along with 3-4 rubble piles of gneiss and schist that have since mossed over.

This mountain was formed when Pangea formed, and was probably sharp and jagged like the Rockies or Himalayas back then, but has been eroding ever since, and is now softened, rounded, and carpeted in moss and hardwoods. 350,000,000 years of seasons and harsh weather. Thinking in this time frame helps dissipate any problems you think you might have.

When you walk up a v-notch/watershead of the mountain, it can give a man a sense of reverence. You feel the ancientness of the place. You can look backwards and visualize a time-lapse of the erosion, 1 frame = 1 century. Most of the soil gone, just boulder and stone, and lots of moss. This place is covered in moss. Sometimes it feels like a rainforest.

Cairns were always trail/boundary markers. I've read that travelers used to place stones at cairns, as an offering to Hermes, the Greek messenger god of boundaries, roads and travelers, commerce, thieves, athletes, and shepherds.

In the mythology of ancient Greece, cairns were associated with Hermes, the god of overland travel. According to one legend, Hermes was put on trial by Hera for slaying her favorite servant, the monster Argus. All of the other gods acted as a jury, and as a way of declaring their verdict they were given pebbles, and told to throw them at whichever person they deemed to be in the right, Hermes or Hera. Hermes argued so skillfully that he ended up buried under a heap of pebbles, and this was the first cairn.

In the 11 years since becoming a steward to this site, I've started my own piles of stone like the previous stewards. There is a creek just down the road that separates private land from the state preserved mountain park. Our family calls it, "Fairy Creek". The old road up the mountain used to cross it, and you can see remains of an old rotted wood foundation where a bridge used to cross the creek. It's now blocked off with moss covered boulders, but it's at this access point (to the almost 25,000 acres), itself a liminal space, a boundary between two worlds (private/public)(occupied/wild), where our family has started our own cairn (above photo), each stone our own offering to the Fae, Naiads, Dryads, Undines of the streams, trees, stones of the mountain.

There are so many stones here that cairns and piles just happen. Artful stacks are more pleasing to the eye than random rubble, so I've begun creating my own installations and rock sculpture, and balancing stone as a challenging game, the more precarious and gravity defying the stack, the better. I usually take a photo of them right away, because they eventually fall over, either its a bird landing on them, vibration from a neighbors dozer, or strong wind coming off the mountain.

Each stack becomes it's own axis mundi.

“The observer when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.”  

-Bertrand Russell

The above stack is one of my favorites from the last two weeks.

I had wanted to write a bunch about the Myth of Sisyphus since he had his own dealings with stone. But I'll throw down some good quotes from it:

"One does not discover the absurd without being tempted to write a manual of happiness. "What! by such narrow ways–?" There is but one word however. Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable."

"I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."

-Albert Camus

Good note to leave on. Hope you've enjoyed reading about my adventures with stone. Thanks for subscribing to Bucket Work. Comments are always welcome. And if you think a friend might enjoy it, feel free to share the sign up page.

Stay Well,

Erik

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