Breaking Stone

I'm told we're in a drought here, but we've had so much torrential rain lately that things are washed out. I've spent the last few days trying to repair the driveway, which (as is common for rural driveways) is somewhat long. The original owner wisely built his house upon a hill surrounded by hardwood trees, with the pastures in the land below. This protects the house from the dangers of flooding, while giving the pastures the benefit of extra moisture from the runoff.

However, it also means that the driveway extends up a hill, and is prone to washing out. Someday I would like to pave it, but for now it is gravel over red clay, and (as is usually true with red clay) quite prone to having whole sections turned into ravines by a heavy storm.

Fortunately there are some spots of quartz stone on the property, which is relatively easy to quarry. So, since Friday, I've been breaking the stone out of the ground with a pick, shipping the big chunks in a wheelbarrow to the ravines, and then breaking them into small stones and gravel with an eight-pound sledgehammer.

Eight pounds doesn't sound like a lot of weight, but swung from above your head with both hands, you will often strike a stone of eighty pounds and see it burst into three or four pieces. With practice you develop an eye for the lay of the crystal structure, so that you can shear off a piece, or cause the whole to shatter into fragments. Sometimes I dig trenches and fill them with larger stones, so as to trap runoff and silt.

In any case it's hard but satisfying work. The next time someone tells me I didn't build the roads I use for commerce, I can answer: "I surely helped."

8 comments:

Eric Blair said...

You didn't make that quartz...

Grim said...

True enough. Vulcan made that.

Eric Blair said...

heh.

raven said...

It can be really satisfying to do a hard physical job that requires minimal thinking- almost like a mental vacation.

E Hines said...

Have you thought about putting culverts into the ravines (or some of them), deepening where necessary to hold the culvert, so as to control and guide the runoff and lower the likelihood of new ravines being dug? Of course the culverts will want periodic maintenance, too....

But, then, you won't have built those culverts or culvert-holders, either....

Eric Hines

Texan99 said...

I've been lettering signs for the fire department lately, while listening to lectures. Your post reminds me of the Egyptians putting up pyramids. Just keep at it for about a million man-hours! And remember, many Roman roads and bridges are still in use today.

bthun said...

What raven said...

When W.B. and I were much, much younger, she used to onder why I was so woe-out from office skirmishes, debugging, ah excuse me, instrumenting code on a consulting basis for customers, and dealing with stressed customers --'You have to fix my application ASAP or I'm gonna lose my job!'--.

For the longest time she could not understand why I would not talk to anyone, beyond a "Hi, I'm home" for at least an hour after arriving without doing some vegetative piddlin' in the garage, or doing the functional equivalent with a hand held tool, a power tool, or doing something that involved using a internal combustion engine in anger...

Manual labor is good for the soul. Hefting a pickaxe or a 8 lb sledge is good for the physique too.

bthun said...

she used to wonder, not onder...