My Bit of Ireland in the Tropics: Dry Stone Walls

My friend Tammy tells people that in Hawaii Evelyn is building Irish stone walls. Well, maybe I am. From the first time I witnessed them, Ireland's stone walls have captivated me, and, as I continue to construct stone walls on my own property, there have been multiple moments of conscious acknowledgement on my part that they may be a wee bit like the the ones in Ireland.

Before writing this post, I decided to Google "Irish stone walls," and here is what I learned about one of Ireland's distinctive landscape features: "It is estimated that the Irish countryside is a patchwork of over 250,000 miles of stone wall. Because the land in many parts of Ireland is naturally very stony, in order to be farmed, it had to be cleared of these stones. Since there was no easy method of getting rid of stones and there was a need to create separate divisions of the land, the obvious thing to do was to build walls."

In addition to a long held affinity for Irish stone walls (beginning with my very first visit in 1993), I relate to a couple points found within the Irish motivation to build stone walls. (1) My property is markedly "stony"; indeed, it is predominantly lava "bye-products" atop of even more lava. (2) There is no easy way to get rid of the stones...and I actually rather like my stones and have wanted to keep them.

During that cursory research of Irish stone walls, I also discovered the term that describes my type of walls--dry stone walls--the traits of dry stone walls, and their reason for being: "At their simplest these walls are easily built. Boulders are piled on top of each other, often with the largest ones at the base and the boulders getting smaller towards the top, though sometimes this is a subtle thing at best and the stones seem much the same size throughout."

Right now I will confess that my modus operandi fits 'this is a subtle thing at best.'

The description continues with these points:

• These walls are built without any tools and with no mortar--the stone is not cut, though it may be broken--whatever stones are available are made to fit as well as possible. [TRUTH, although I do not break stones unless it happens without concerted effort by me.]

• The walls are often quite low and not very stable; they constantly need to be repaired by replacing fallen stones, a task which farmers still undertake regularly. [Yep, not overly stable, and I do reparation sweeps of the yard periodically.]

• However, paradoxically, it is their very instability that makes them good barriers, as livestock who are reared in the area are wary of trying to cross them, having learned from experience that they collapse rather easily, dropping heavy stones (painfully) on them. [Since my only livestock are feral chickens and stray cats, I have little experience with this virtue of dry stone walls.]

• Some of the fields surrounded by these walls have no gates; the wall is simply disassembled to allow entry or exit and then rebuilt. [Although entry/exit is not one of my issues, I have disassembled and reassembled portions of my wall because I continue to uncover more rocks, and my wall-building skills have improved.]

When I first moved into my house, though, the only visible rocks in the yard were several large boulders placed for "landscaping purposes"(think "curb appeal") to aid in the selling of the place. All the rocks that comprise my stone walls still rested, well concealed, under a shallow layer of gravel--also spread across certain areas for "landscaping purposes"--or a rusty colored, coarse-grained dirt. When I attempted to plant a few bushes, I quickly encountered an entrenched population of rocks. Thus began my excavation of the property and the commencement of rock walls, two endeavors that continue to this day.

This photo--meant to document the catchment tank in my backyard--shows the way the backyard looked when I moved in. Can you see any black lava rocks anywhere? You cannot. At that time I did not have a clue about what really lay below the surface of things.

Now here, maybe around nine months in to this home-owning gig, the wall has begun. Actually there were some shelves of lava rock just below that rusty-red surface that were not broken and leveled to create the foundation space for the house. You can see them incorporated into the emerging rock wall on the left and in the back. 

And these photos show my backyard dry stone walls as of this month:

Dry stone walls with orchids and hibiscus.

Indeed, I have not neglected stone wall construction in my front yard either, but I shall unfold that landscaping story on another day in a different post...perhaps one titled "How Lava Rock Dictates Landscape Design."

And for my own purposes, I shall conclude with the final stanzas of a poem by Patrick Galvin titled "The Wall" because, in the end, stone walls for me will ever hold this enduring, mystical aura:

You could measure the light

By the wall.

And

if you stood close to the wall

You could hear the Earth moving

The stars burning

And the sun

Sinking

Slowly

Into a folding sea.

You could measure the dark

By the wall.