Winifred Bird
The Japanese countryside is full of stone walls. They are not freestanding grey lines used for dividing property but rather buttresses that hold back the mountains and shape them into something that can be lived on and farmed. They are layer cakes of stone and dirt sprouting ferns, vines, grasses, and flowers — living, ancient things covered in moss and lichens and succulents of pale pink, sea-green, grey and yellow. Snakes and lizards hide in their cracks and thickets of spider lily leaves sprout from their tops like cartoon hair.
Building a stone wall like this is neither fast nor cheap. It is like putting together a puzzle from randomly-assembled pieces. The work is exhausting, requires constant attention to judge the fit of stone on stone, and cannot be done by a machine.
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