The Flagstone Walk

In planning my stone walk, I thought I would make it more than just a path, more than something to step upon, rather a walk with personality and character. While I was thinking about these things I became conscious of all the flagstone structures in my neighborhood, how they wound in and out of the shrubbery, how the grass and sometimes the weeds grew between the rocks, how some were winding and graceful and others straight as a die, but I saw nothing that was exactly what I wanted.

Mine was to be different and individual not only as to shape and form but as to material. Not that the other walks were not good and meant as much perhaps to their respective owners, but simply that mine had to embody certain values that perhaps I alone could recognize and appreciate. And that I think is important in planning any sort of a personal structure. Unless it means more than just utility, half of the real value is lost.

I looked everywhere, almost decided at one time to use flat pieces of rosy granite from a cut where the road builders had gone through, but then abandoned the idea because the pieces were too jagged and heavy to handle.

And then, walking along a lakeshore near my home, I found exactly what I wanted. Here were rocks of all shapes and sizes, slates, granites, greenstones and schists, but what intrigued me the most was a shelf of slatey material right at the water's edge, with what looked very much like ripple marks on each individual surface. I picked up a piece and examined it with interest. Slate, I knew, was at one time mud. If the mud was under water, perhaps the bottom of an ocean or a prehistoric river or a lake, it could easily develop ripple marks that might just as possibly have been set and finally, when exposed to the sun, baked into shape for eternity. At least that was what I chose to believe, and what I believed with respect to the stones going into my walk was more important to me than any geological supposition, verified or not.

That setttled the matter of material for me. Here at last was the stuff that would giver character to my path, here was something to think about and ponder as long as I lived. To others, it would be just another flagstone walk with the grass coming up between the stones as it should, but to me it would be different from any other in the world.

I gathered all the flat pieces of shale and slate I could find, and after much labor carried them all into my yard and set them where they belonged.

Now, after a rain, the slate glistens and shines, and the ripple marks look fairly alive, and when I walk down this little path of mine, I can believe if I wish that I am walking on stones which at one time were the bottom of a lake or river, that water once flowed around them, that I actually may have taken for my own a small part of an ancient ocean floor, and that is exactly what I wantted when I first planned my flagstone walk. Each time I see it I know that I have built well.