Damariscotta Lake (Where the Blackflies Roam)

  So, this is the first wall we built with Clark on the lake, and the next will essentially be a mirror on the other side of the drive.  And yes, the blackflies were horrendous, and yes, they did carry Damon away. We spend so much time working on the ocean, where the breeze tends to keep them away, that we forget how bad they can be inland.

Picking Rocks Again

  I love it, but every time I do it I am reminded of how exhausting it is.  We have been picking off the remnants of an old and toppled wall on a mountaintop in Hope for the last few days.  This one is long as hell and, incredibly, almost ten feet wide in spots.  Most of it is at or near ground level and much of it has long sunk into the earth, so that we find ourselves pawing downward into these little foxholes.  The stones are gorgeous, however, and worth every bit of effort; moss covered and lichen strewn with a wonderful variety of shapes and sizes.  The whole fifteen-yard load will be fully picked and ready for transport to Scarborough by the end of today.

  Then the ubiquitous amazing view that comes with working outdoors in Maine...

  Then this happened on the way home... in the valley... in the fog... and snow... as the sun went down...
it was terrible...

North Haven Farm Wall

 
  Some shots of about one-third of the wall we build last summer on North Haven, which was 1000 feet long when it was finished.

Stone Shapes

  I am reading an interesting book by Robert M. Thorson called Exploring Stone Walls, A Field Guide to New England's Stone Walls. I thought I would share this bit about the shapes of stones from pages 25-26. There are "eight categories of basic shapes common to stones found in New England Walls:
Blocks are equant and angular.
Balls are equant and rounded.
Prisms are columns that are angular.
Rollers are columns that are rounded.
Books are tablets that are angular.
Disks are tablets that are rounded.
Slabs can be either angular or rounded, but are normally subangular.

Blades are usually angular."