Paths Part One: On Gratitude

The following post was written by OSGF’s Biocultural Conservation Farmer and Greenhouse Manager Caitlin Etherton. It is the first in a series she is writing about the pathways at Oak Spring, and how they can connect us; to the past, to nature, and to each other.

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It was a wintery blue-sky day the first time I chatted with Tommy. He and Ricky were waiting in line for some sand from a big pile in the barn and instead of watching me work they lifted their shovels and helped me finish filling sandbags without ever being asked. Our conversation was friendly and kind and the two of them made me feel like I’d been part of the team for ages when I’d only begun a few weeks prior. Tommy has worked at Oak Spring for over 48 years. He’s a skilled stonemason with an excellent mustache and expressive eyebrows. He’s always the first to wave when I pass by in the farm truck and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him without a baseball cap.

All year I have walked the sturdy fieldstone path that Tommy laid out decades ago in front of the cottage where I live (pictured in this article’s banner image). Fall, winter, spring, summer. Through leaves, snow, pollen, and weeds I’ve clomped down the two front steps then out down the walk through the white wooden gate we leave wide open. In and out, in and out I go ten or more times a day. Out to the farm. In for supper. Out to take the recycling. In for coffee. Out for an evening walk. In to get my raincoat. Out to feed the chickens. Out to greet an arriving friend. In to grab the car keys I forgot.

Thirty steps in.

Thirty steps out.

Fifteen steps to the middle where I sometimes sit with the porch lights off to look up at the stars.

Nine months of living and working at Oak Spring and I never once wondered whose hands cut and shaped and edged and pointed in that stone walkway. Even in late May when I first felt the path warm up beneath my bare feet, even when I felt that captured sun flood through the cobbled stone to my calloused heels, even then I didn’t consider that there was someone to thank. 

The site of the accident (photo courtesy of the Biocultural Conservation Farm)

But then it was June. 24th to be exactly. I was blustering around the walled garden at Oak Spring’s Biocultural Conservation Farm, where I work. More specifically I was pacing up and down the paths between our three sisters of corn, candy roaster squash, and heirloom beans, adjusting drip tape and tightening end caps. I stepped up out of the field to flip on the irrigation and abruptly wiped out on a tree stump sitting smack-dab in the middle of the walking path. To say I did not see it coming is an understatement. It was as if I had forgotten that tree stumps exist. It was as if, in my brain, the word “path” was synonymous with words like “clear” or “level” or “unobstructed”—a dangerous lie that a smarter farmer would never have assumed.

It was sunny. About two o’clock. No one was with me. It was not a graceful fall. There was probably a small scream. Sarah, an assistant arborist and conservationist, was driving by when it happened and saw only a flailing of arms above the garden wall before she lurched her truck into reverse. My full weight fell on one outstretched hand and my left wrist bone snapped in half. She asked if I was okay. I shrugged and said I just needed ice.

Our archivist, Nancy, who worked for decades as a nurse, said that I needed more than ice. She met me at home and again we walked down the front walk, thirty tender steps to the car. Then an X-ray. Then a cast. Then thirty steps back into the house with a pain prescription.

When a farmer breaks their arm in the middle of the summer they cannot harvest vegetables because in the summer vegetables are heavy things. When a farmer who is also a writer breaks their arm in the middle of the summer they go home and think, maybe it’s a good time to write. Farmers never get a chance to stop and think in the summer so maybe don’t waste it. Maybe stop and think. Take a crack at writing something useful and universal, something like an essay on grass, or on walls, or maybe on what got the farmer into this situation in the first place, like for instance, a tree stump or a path. 

Tommy and Ricky.

So I flag down Tommy and ask if we can chat. Tommy has been making and taking paths at Oak Spring since 1972. He and Ricky are currently creating a gentle stone path through the apple and peach trees behind the Mellons’ former home. From the crab apple arbor to the library, the path is 310 feet long and four feet wide, not counting offsets. It will require eight or so pallets of local field stone. Part of a larger network connecting the Broodmare Barn to the gallery, the library, the Apple House, and the walled formal garden, the new walkways are natural and generous, designed with the same materials and structure as the old path that leads to my front door. The grey field stones are weathered just enough to allow both a stable foundation and a good grip. As the Oak Spring Garden Foundation (OSGF) continues to transition the property we’re on from a private estate to a supportive environment for artists and scholars, these paths will improve access for all visitors of all abilities. Which means each and every field stone that Tommy and Ricky have pointed into place is a way of “pointing to a place.” Each stone is both an ushering forward and an arrival, a welcome mat. Each path is a quiet way of saying these spaces are meant to be connected, fluid, and shared. Convenient paths encourage both staff and visitors to walk instead of driving, to take a moment away from a desk or a truck to be outside, feet on the earth.

An in-progress path leading to the formal garden. These stones have been laid but not yet pointed, the process of creating the finish between the stones.

Tommy comes from a family of masons. His uncle laid stone at Oak Spring long before Tommy laid out Mrs. Mellon’s kitchen garden terrace in the formal garden. Another uncle laid stone just down the road at Trinity Episcopal Church. When I ask Tommy the qualities of a good stonemason he says that you just have to “have the feel for it.” Tommy can read stones for seams to know whether and where they’ll split. He and only one other mason did all the stone work for Oak Spring’s beautiful rare books library, manipulating each piece according to Mrs. Mellon’s careful, nuanced aesthetic. Built in 1976, the library looks much older than it is on purpose. Rather than being laid square and neat, the stones knuckle alongside one another organically.

“It is a unique privilege at Oak Spring to have the same skilled stonemason who helped build the library be the very one who is laying the path to its door.
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A finished section of the path curving by the Oak Spring Garden Library.

It is a unique privilege at Oak Spring to have the same skilled stonemason who helped build the library be the very one who is laying the path to its door. We are fortunate to have rare continuities like this one. It’s safe to say that no one understands Mrs. Mellon’s desire for paths quite like Tommy. But Tommy doesn’t stop much to think about that. Instead he chips at a stone that’s a bit too long and places it over the prepared foundation of gravel, wire, and concrete. He slides his mason level across the center of the path, lays another stone, points cement into the cracks to remove any lingering air bubbles. He asks Ricky to pass him another stone for the edge (edges are always laid first). And then he returns to the middle. Later they will come back and fit smaller stones into the gaps. The space around the rocks will be “pointed in,” a process that involves poking a pointed trowel into the space between the stones to make sure everything is glued together securely without any trapped air bubbles. A pointing trowel is Tommy’s most favorite and most often used tool. The last bits of stone that do not fit in the path at hand will not be thrown away. They’ll be stacked and saved for another project. Every rock has its purpose, Mrs. Mellon was often heard saying.

“Every rock has its purpose, Mrs. Mellon was often heard saying.”

It is mid-July and it is no-clouds-kinda-hot. Tommy and Ricky keep ushering me to sit further under the shade of the canopy they’re working beneath even though I’m not the one moving heavy stones in the sun. We stop for lemonade and I ask Tommy if he likes doing puzzles. He nods his head heartily, saying that he does them every winter. Only 1,000 piece puzzles. Only nature scenes. After he lays the one thousandth piece into place he glues them all together and frames each puzzle to hang in his house. But Tommy swears it’s nothing like laying paths. They’re two separate things. 

The millstone in the center of the gallery patio.

Inside the formal walled garden, Tommy has seen the paths go from dirt to weedy creek-bed gravel to today’s rosy chips, and all of that before OSGF became caretakers of the property in 2016. For all 48 years he’s worked here, the property has never stayed exactly the same, always changing and developing, even when it was a private home. Once encompassing 4,000 acres, the property was divided into parcels after Mrs. Mellon’s death. The 700-acre property OSGF now tends no longer includes the original front entrance. A new road was built to restore the original approach to the home’s facade (designed by classical architect H. Page Cross). Because the Mellons, thankfully, placed their property under conservation easement, certain development restrictions came into play; with the building of one new paved road, a pre-existing road needed to be removed. And so Tommy and Ricky are here, building footpaths where car paths once were, a switch that will accommodate visitors and nature enthusiasts and squirrels and birds alike. The new walkways will connect Oak Spring’s most frequented places, including the stone patio by the gallery which Tommy and Ricky dug and laid entirely by hand (so as not to disrupt the flowers). Ricky’s favorite part is the grooved and speckled millstone set into the center, one of three on the property that Mrs. Mellon collected.

The front facade of the Mellon’s residence at Oak Spring, designed by architect H. Page Cross. A road was rerouted to restore the front approach to this building after the original drive was cut off by property boundaries. Photo by Roger Foley.

The whole way home from my talk with Tommy and Ricky, I am captivated by the surfaces beneath my feet. I am captivated by the thousands and thousands of sturdy stone “welcome mats” his hands have patiently laid. Clay-colored and grey and charcoal. No two alike. Welcome, welcome, welcome, they say. Thank you, thank you, thank you, I think as I walk, looking down from the garden, to the library to the gallery millstone patio to the Broodmare Barn to the thirty stone steps that lead me home.