Puzzled in stone

 A couple of days ago a neighbour passed me on his tractor heading for his nearby paddy field. The usual nod of acknowledgement was quickly followed by an astonished look. His wife, riding behind on the trailer grinned broadly. I had just placed another rock in a stone retaining wall that has so far reached about 14 metres in length and up to 2 metres in height. ‘Amazing. Well done!’ he yelled out over the noise of the thumping engine. In the Japanese self-deprecatory fashion I shouted back ‘Maybe, but a crazy thing to do, eh?’. With broad grins the farmer and his wife nodded again and continued on their way to their field.

 I started my wall in June 2011. It is the latest in a series I have built and my most ambitious to date. I have carved the side of a slope to create a zig-zagging path up to Koumori-tei, Walk Japan’s main office in Japan, and the walls hold the whole thing up. As time passed my ambition grew and the wall has taken on greater dimensions than I first envisaged. A bad back has delayed work for a number of months but the other day I found the time to restart.
 

 The Kunisaki Peninsula has stone retaining walls throughout its length and breadth. Most give form to the stepped-paddy fields, while others provide a delightful frontage to house plots. Some are created of finely wrought stones that fit snuggly together; others of rocks in their irregular, natural state neatly and rhythmically placed against each other; some a rough stack approximating a wall; some are tens of centimetres high while other reach over four metres. The premiere style is the a beautiful concave façade once fashioned by master craftsmen. Most walls, however, were built up by the locals working together in the farming off-seasons. Unfortunately, few master craftsmen remain in the whole of Japan and retaining walls are now mostly built of concrete.  

 
So, perhaps, these days an amazing thing to see being built. And, yes a crazy thing to do. It takes an inordinate amount of time, overly heavy stones occasionally put backs out and sometimes fingers are painfully caught between a rock and a hard place. But as much as I want to quickly finish it, the wall cannot be rushed. The rocks create an intriguing puzzle that only patience and time can solve. Life can only but take on a gentle, meditative pace. About another 7 metres or so to go and with luck I might have it completed by the end of the year. To be continued....