Another Stoney Evening...

Today the weather was agreeable, but the stacks were mostly still up. I did repair tabletop roundies, which had been taken down last night by the big one next to it. I suspect foul play, as the one next to it was pretty danged stable. As it turned out, I just fixed tabletop (which I have grown to love) and then went in search of rocks. I found a construction site that I plan to scour daily for a while. It was a giant mudpit today from the heavy rain storm last night (which means the stacks survived even that heavy a rain), so I couldn't go after a lot that I saw. I did retreive three beauties, though. One of them was a backbreaker that crushed my pinky as I loaded it (finally) into the trunk. I'll be getting some great stuff in the future as the ground dries and I can go into the clearings further.
I was pulling out of the driveway today when I noticed the neighbor had stacked four nice (little) pieces of quartz near his driveway. I may have a chance to coax him into giving me a tiny hunk of lawn (a three to four foot circle would be plenty) for a good stack. He'll get a free maintenence plan since he's across the street. I've already planned it out. I'll let you know, of course, how it pans out.

...a glorious day in the garden. I got up early (for me) and spent some time in the garden. I rebuilt, built from scratch, and spent the last of my free time before work using the last of my free little stones doing a nice border around the garden. All in all it was a glorious afternoon. I took frequent breaks to do laundry, drink coffee, read, and watch the birds frolic on the newly filled feeder. All but the laundry involved enjoying the sunny weather. This is good for my roomie, who sleeps till two in the afternoon, so he didn't have to deal with me tiptoeing around the creaky wood floor and laughing at internet jokes right outside his bedroom door. When I got home tonight all of the stacks were still up, so I don't know what I'll do tomorrow if there are no stacks to rebuild. Maybe I'll go in search of a good field of stone like Dave has to build in. I'm jealous of his availability of stackable stone. Maybe some riverside access will do the trick.

Had to rebuild this arch today. The stack behind it fell last night and took this one with it. I got to use the bird stone (rock C from the right) and I think it's happy here. Time will tell.

Replaced this one today after it toppled while I was toiling at the money job last night. It took down an arch from yesterday, which I just told you about. When working with this blog site I have to do my entries in reverse, so the last pictures you see were written about first. So I have to think backwards when typing and sending photos. It's harder than I make it seem. Try writing a journal entry backwards. You'll see.

Tabletop roundies. This one is pretty delicate because the four legs of the table are just sitting on the ground. Working with the little roundies presents an unique set of balance issues, as they don't have three points of contact very often ( the triad of balancing stability),

Buddy's kids. Send your money today.

The garden when I left for work today.

I like this one. It's heavy and dependent.

Two towers. I did the right one on Saturday evening. The left one was today. I started putting the tall roundies on top after coming back from the river in NC.

This is baby arch. It was the third of the day. She's pretty tough.

The second arch of the day. It had big stones and I did it without supports underneath. It's about knee high.

Did this roundie arch and surrounded it with roundies. This is, of course, a top view.

The roundie arch. Those guys are tough to work with.

Today's first arch. I just had to put that red rock on top. It's from Dave's garden in NC. It screams to be prominent. If ever there was a rock that thought it was a face, it's this baby.

Playing with the camera last night.

Last night. Experimenting with tihe shutter control on the camera.

...about the trip to Dave's Avant Garden in NC. It was like a vacation in paradise for the novice stacker. Dave has four places near his home where he can go and be surrounded by stones to stack. I wore a hat most of the time so that he couldn't see that I was green with envy. I got to his place about 1400 Wednesday and stacked in his back yard till he got home from work. Then we were off to the Garden. The first thing we did was repair the stack at Quayle Manor. It was at this point that I realized the first difference between Dave's stacking methods and my own--Dave works on a massive scale. The stack was in the middle of the river on a boulder. The rocks we stacked weighed from ten to eighty pounds each (except for the cap stone). "My God," I thought, "What have I gotten myself into?"
It was the begining of an awesome pilgrimage. I met Anne's sister (cool), Anne's father, (also cool) and got to see the kids again. I haven't seen Matt and KT since Matt was three and KT was donning diapers. I got to meet Josh for the first time and he was as super cool as the other two. I can't wait to know those guys as they get older.
You know what, this is getting wordy. Let's look at pictures.

The Stack at Quayle Manor. Huge Rocks. Cold Water. This is why Dave is my guru. Well, one of the reasons. He's just my guru in stacking, though. There are things I could teach him about other stuff if he could afford my lesson price. Not about picking wives, though. His wife Anne and his kids are some of my favorite humans on this planet. It's a big planet.

Dave photographing the new stack at Quayle Manor. I need some of those boots.

This was one of my first stacks in the garden. It's dependent and cool, I think.

This is Windy. Dave first balanced this one a couple of weeks ago and named it because it's incredibly sensitive to the wind that howls through the garden. It's a very delicate blance and a huge stone. He showed me the stone and the place it should stand and I got to balance it myself. It took about seven or eight minutes of holding this huge rock at shoulder height (I was crouching down). I was honored to re-balance one of Dave's creations. It is a true beauty. I mean come on, look at it. It defies gravity, logic, and rational thought.

Just for scale. Windy is big. I go about eight feet tall, so this about a two ton boulder. Not really, but that sucker's big. I guess it's about fifty pounds really. Dave, leave a comment and correct me if I'm wrong. You've moved it more than me. It's a beautiful stone, though.

See how high he builds? See how big the stones are in relation to his waist? It's heavy stuff, man. No, I mean heavy. Like "break your leg if it falls heavy."

The Dave in his back yard repairing wind injured stacks. Look how freaking big they are. Huge stones.

I learned a lot while I was there. Dave works big. Big heavy rocks that go high. If you want to make a staircase, start at the bottom. When making big arches on your own, stack logs underneath and then remove them. Make sure they're smooth and straight. Lots of stuff like that. I also came to realize that, at this point, at least, Dave and I have some differences in style and theory. Dave will build a big beautiful stack and if it falls he wants to reuse the same rocks in the rebuild. I like to move them around. My stacks are smaller and are more delicate. A lot of this stems, I think, from the fact that he has infinitely more stone and space than I do. He also has no aversion to moving rocks all over town. I like to take them from a site, bring them home, and deal with them. Again, I think it has to do with availability.

This is the lantern we used to stack by after dinner on Wednesday night. We went and built ten waist-high arches together by moon and lantern light. It was an awesome experience for the novice stacker. Dave is a man possessed at times. There where times when I was beat and my hands were numb and I was about to say "Let's head on home," and he'd say, "The next one should be here," and we'd start gathering more rocks. That lantern is an old school wick and oil job. Not the Coleman "You're Carrying The Sun Around" lantern. It was beautiful to work with. A glorious yellow light that made excellent shadow cinema when you swung it around the stacks.

You can see several of the arches in this shot. Tomorrow or the next day I may bore you with the individual shots of each arch. They are all incredible in their own way. Each has a unique balance feature. Anne's dad Peter, whom I've heard about for years and just met this week, even commented on how they were wonderfully different. When we did this one, Dave said he would allow the cheater stone (the long one that spans a long gap) if it would support another on top of it. It took it easily so we agreed it had to take another, which it did, thereby proving its worth.

Here's another. Working togethr is great in a lot of ways. The key was getting enough rocks in the zone to work with one hand while supporting your side of the arch until the keystone goes in. Plus we were working by lantern light.

View through the arches. That's one of my favorites. It has all of the proper characteristics of the classic arch.

This is my tribute to Windy. This guy goes about fifty or sixty pounds and is delicately balanced. It was taken by the wicked wind after aabout twenty minutes. I called it Casper, because it's friends with Windy (Wendy). I know it's a stretch, but you weren't there and the dog (Sylvia) wasn't forthcoming with great ideas for names.

A celebratory hillbilly dance. This one's a six-footer. It lasted till I left. Time will tell. I hope it hangs a while. It seems pretty tough.

The first of these. I knew the wind would topple the little roundies on top, but I've been dying to try some of those river stones in a stack. They're so round that they are tough to balance, and the more you put on the more difficult it becomes.

This is the first rebuild of this guy. Man it was windy there. I thought this one was solid as Sears, but it turned out to be as solid as, well, Sears.

The Guru on the bench that he and I built on his neighbor's land. It's amazingly comfortable. The seat is at the perfect height in relation to the ground it sits on. You wouldn't believe what it took to get the rocks to the spot. Let's just say that there was danger and risk of fractured limbs. On my part, not the trees. Dave will haul rocks everywhere and anywhere. We took ten and used four. I convinced him to do the stack in the background so that we wouldn't have to take the left-overs home. He did insist that we take one of his faves back with us. It was a long walk back to the car with it. The folks we built it for really loved it, though. They baked him a beautiful cake. It had chocolate rock stacks on it. See the link to his site. It's awesome.

My new tribute to The Dave. This one has huge stones. I had to roll rock C from about thirty yards away. It took forever. It goes an easy sevent-five pounds. Rock E is an easy forty pounder. The whole thing is about six inches higher than I am. I stand five foot twelve. That's six feet if you're no math whiz.

Baby Stacks. I need to practice with the little smoothies. They present new challenges all their own.

Part of the garden. From left to right are mine, Dave's, Dave's, Sewer Pipe, mine, more of Dave's.

The first river balance. This guy weighs about fifty pounds, and it took me about ten minutes to get it to stand. It lasted about thirty minutes before the wind whipped downstream and took her down. I had to throw out stepping stones to get to the rock it stands on.

The second river balance. This one also weighed about fifty pounds. I did a movie of this one with the river babbling behind it. It's very peaceful and reminds me that there are places where the rocks are free. Free range rock, I call it.

Dave's stack and Dave's dog. Dave's dogs are always cool. She went with me to stack when Dave was at work. I know I can trust Dave's dogs to be good when I take them places. I think that Anne has a lot to do with their proper training. In fact I'm pretty sure of it.

This was a big heavy guy too. The third rebuild in this spot. As Dave and I were doing other things, a huge wind came and we saw it go down. I let out a big howl of remorse, "Nooooooooo!"

So you just get more teasers. There's more on the way, don't worry. Dave was amazed at the sheer volume of photos I took. My vanity makes me preserve each stack in pictures, lest they blow over quickly. I have to have the proof that I really did them, both for me and others.

This is the stack in front of Quayle Manor with Dave the Rock Guru. He was taking a photo or two himself. Note the boots, that allow him to stack in water up to his knees. I need some of those. When I met Monsiuer Quayle, he came up and asked me (after watching me stack a while) if I enjoyed hiking in the mountains, to which I naturally replied yes. He then gave me one of his home made hiking staffs, which has a great carry notch. Good guy. Good staff. I have to stay on his good side to see if he'll gift me with a deluxe staff on my next trip.

I did this one in by Dave's house before dinner. The formation to its left is called Napolean. That's why this one is called Hail The Emperor. It fell in the high winds of Thursday morning. That's why it's now called, How the Mighty Have Fallen.

Stacking by lantern light. We went out on Wednesday night and did ten arches by the light of the lantern. Don't worry, you'll see them all soon enough.