Plenty of rocks still in the ground
I think of stone walls as being everywhere in New England, immovable fixtures of the landscape, more numerous than white churches with steeples. It was sad to read an article about how they are disappearing from the landscape. Every geology student and Connecticut gardener knows that when the glaciers receded from the area, they left behind rocks. Lots and lots of rocks. What do you do when you want to farm and your hoe keeps hitting big rocks? You pile ’em up into a stone wall by your field, no mortar necessary. Now these walls are being purchased and moved elsewhere (you read that right, somewhere where they didn’t have glaciers or they’re too lazy to dig up their own rocks), destroyed in landscaping and road projects, and even stolen (again, presumably by people who can’t manage to dig up their own rocks). Some towns are creating regulations to protect their stone walls. It’s rather sad to think that one day I could be visiting “the last remaining stone wall dating from colonial times” with a bronze plaque and a barbed wire fence to protect it from people who can’t manage to dig up their own stinkin’ rocks.