Amongst my favourite images is the drystane dyke. As a boy growing up in Ayrshire farms they were as familiar as our own living room. I climbed over them, hid behind them, peeked through the holes, and always, always, replaced any stones that had fallen into the field.
Jimmy Welsh was one of the older farm workers, and to me he was as ancient as some of the drystane dykes he repaired and occasionally built. He had an old and huge bicycle on which I learned to go a bike, by putting a leg through the frame because the seat and the bar were far too high for me to even reach the pedals - let alone the ground.
Jimmy used to work on the dykes around our house and I sometimes helped him. The way he weighed up a stone, visualised its shape, found the right way to position it, then repeat with the next stone, and gradually the dyke was repaired. Ever since I have loved the workmanship and the aesthetic functionality of a wall built without cement, each stone fitting with and supporting the others. Over years the lichen gently invades and in the right places moss creeps across the edges and gaps, and the colours weather and blend.
A well built dyke is like a brushstroke across a landscape; an old and overgrown dyke is for me, a thing of beauty. Walking on the edge of an Aberdeenshire wood I stopped and admired the layers of colour, texture, light and form. The photo is of a retaining wall beside an old estate forest, I guess going back at least to the end of the 19th Cenutry, possibly much earlier. It stands there as evidence of durability in the midst of change. Softened by moss, framed in purple heather and contrasting sunlit green branches, this is a venerable dyke. The word is chosen with some care; 'venerable' means "accorded a great deal of respect, especially because of age, wisdom, or character."
I guess it seems odd and even daft to think of an ancient hand built dyke as embodying wisdom and character. But as old Jimmy Welsh might have said, "Haud oan a meenit!" Think of the wisdom and character of the builder being built into his work. Think of the years of experience, the trained eye, the calloused hands, and the pride in building something that uses what is there to good purpose.
Then consider what the dyke is for, to separate boundaries, as a retaining wall, or to enclose a field for animal grazing. For none of these purposes does it need to look attractive, but a well built dyke is craftsmanship in stone, and is built to last, and over years takes on the look of something that belongs where it has always been. Hence, a venerable dyke.
Allow me to quote one of my favourite poems by Wendell Berry, who sits on the easiest to reach bookshelf of my personal canon:
Sabbath Poems
2002
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Teach me work that honours thy work,
the true economies of goods and words,
to make my arts compatible
with the songs of the local birds.
Teach me patience beyond work –
and, beyond patience, the blest
Sabbath of thy unresting love
which lights all things and gives rest.
What I learned from Jimmy Welsh was the importance of loving the work you do, doing "work that honours work." I learned that lesson by watching it happening; I was a child witness to patient thoughtfulness informed by an experienced eye, and implemented with hands that knew the shape and heft and fittingness of each stone. Coming across this old Aberdeenshire drystane dyke, I felt an inner vindication of such memories. Not so much sentimental nostalgia; more an inner recalling of a lesson I saw performed with quiet contentment and ease of confidence, one I have never forgotten.
When you build the form of your life, as we all have to do, using well what is there, shaping and forming heart and mind by discovering the fittingness of things, honour that work with patience, and love the work. It is an art form, a skill and discipline honed over the years of our living, and a calling to build something that will last. Venerable is not a bad description of a well built dyke, or a well lived life: "accorded a great deal of respect, especially because of age, wisdom, or character." Aye. That.
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