Working with Stone: A Hammer and a Horse

In days gone by, “a hammer and a horse” was all one needed to start working as a dry stone waller. If you had a horse to transport the stone and a hammer to break it, you were in business. While that still could be true in some regions of the world, for most contemporary wallers there’s more than just two items in the equipment shed.

Today’s working waller keeps one eye focused on the task at hand and the other on the lookout for any innovation that might improve the work, save time or reduce aches and pains. Progressive ideas often involve buying or making a new piece of equipment. As a consequence, there tends to be an ever-growing collection of stuff that needs maintenance and replacement. Over time, the job becomes more about mechanics than creativity.

While positive advancements may be measurable, are they always meaningful? Do they bring a worker closer to the satisfactions sought when they first began to handle stone? What is there about a physically demanding field of endeavor that makes it attractive in the current digital age?

In essence, building with dry stone is the act of moving bits of rock from one spot to another. Not much new, physically, happens to the material, but the builder’s psychic space gets charged with fresh energy all day long. Its intensity and positivity define the total experience.

The reason for, and meaning of, being may rise up as an existential question to be contemplated if the job is kept as simple as laying one stone on two, two stones on one. The mind is open to reflection because the hand and eye are taking care of business on the ground. If the stone is taken as found, not even shaped by a hammer, the resulting work may not achieve the highest standard of finish but by keeping the process as simple as can be, a richer experience of being may be the waller’s reward.