I know this because I collected the stones.
The one thing I know for certain: The experience taught me that rocks, like ideas, fit together when they’re supposed to. Not before, and not later.
I know this. I recall the endless pickup-truck-loads of stones and small boulders that I collected and placed into neat piles in front of the trenches from which his walls grew.
From there, one by one, the rocks, small, large, fractured, twisted, flat, round, bulbous, angular, metamorphic, granite, white, red, green, and black, all eventually grew into something so randomly symmetrical, defined, purposeful, and everlasting.
With each placement, each rock was assessed by its value and contribution to each space that came available. And often (always?) that meant that in the entire field of rock piles I assembled, there was most often only one that could and would accomplish the solution being sought. And then again, sometimes not, requiring another trip in the progressively pockmarked little red Ford pickup.
And yet, when each wall was complete, and the stone piles were exhausted to pebbles; each one of them, and finally each pebble too, found its place, in the exact spot and with the exact purpose that only it could fulfill.
Like ideas. Like plans. Like goals and accomplishments. Nothing is without purpose, meaning, and value. Nothing does not have its place. What did rocks teach me? Simple. Truth and meaning are realized when seemingly disparate things find the purposes inherent to each of them as parts of a greater and successful whole.
