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POMFRET — A program on stone walls will be presented from 7 to 8 p.m. Oct. 4 at the Connecticut Audubon Society Center on Day road. Admission is $5 for CAS members and $10 for nonmembers.
Registration requested. Call 860-928-4948.
Dry stone walls are the most noticeable features of the larger domain of stone objects that also includes cellar holes, cairns, piles, lines, scatters, and individual notable stones.
UConn professor of earth sciences and author, Dr. Robert Thorson will outline the history of our quintessentially New England fieldstone walls, provide several key clues to interpreting them, link them to modern habitats, and make recommendations for their conservation and management.
Thorson is the author of “Stone by Stone: The Magnificent History of New England Stone Walls,” the 2003 Connecticut Book Award winner for nonfiction, and “Exploring Stone Walls,” the first field guide to stone walls. We will be giving away one copy of the latter title. He coordinates The Stone Wall Initiative (https://stonewall.uconn.edu/) website, an online resource for those interested in the historic stone walls of New England.
Beginning with his field guide, Thorson has worked out a naming and classification system for relict stone walls. His thinking is that an objective tool and scientific approach to their study will lead to better documentation, inventorying, and environmental management. He suggests there are parallels between wetlands conservation and stone wall conservation.
If you have spent any time in the woods, you are more likely than not to have come across an old stone wall. Maps produced by aerial imaging systems, such as LiDAR (Light Direction and Ranging) which “look” through the forest canopy, reveal an abundance of them. They are indicative of early agricultural and industrial impacts on the landscape.
When European colonists first came to Connecticut, the land was heavily forested with huge chestnut, oak, and pine trees. By the mid-1800s, only 20 percent of the state was forested. The trees had been cut, and stone walls built to clear the land for agriculture and construction, pen livestock, and mark boundaries. For several reasons, in the second half of the 19th century, the cleared land was abandoned, and the forests and woods reclaimed it. Like pottery and tools, the walls remained as artifacts of times past.
CAS Northeast Corner Director Sarah Heminway said: “Our hope is this program helps to foster a deeper awareness of and appreciation for the many stone walls in our Quiet Corner towns.” At Trail Wood in Hampton, donated to CAS by Edwin Way Teale and Nellie, his wife, Edwin measured 5 miles of “stone fences” on the property. He wrote about them in his book, A Naturalist Buys an Old Farm. The best walls at Trail Wood are made of schist from the Hebron Gneiss formation, a stone that naturally splits into tablets and slabs and was especially good for capstones. Teale also considered the natural history of his stone walls – a hunting ground for long-tailed weasels, food storage for squirrels, a travel route for a red fox, shelter for a blue jay, homes for field mice...
While advocating for a scientific approach to their management, Thorson deeply appreciates the old stone walls for enhancing our lives and he hopes to see them conserved. When he moved to Connecticut, he came to understand “the … cultural bond between New England’s stone walls and its regional identity.” Thorson sums it up this way, “The soul of New England perches on a rock.”
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