All day. One stone. And it felt like a great accomplishment.

That one stone took about two minutes to set. I rolled it away from the pile, flopped it onto the ground, and nestled it snugly into place. A quick eye along the stringline and there it was: the first stone of the project. Time to go home.

99.999 percent of the work took place before that rock found a home.

First there were sketches. Then clay models. Lots of clay models. Then a long period of head scratching. How would I translate one of those models into the real world? I walked around Lowe’s until I got an idea for how to build a frame. Then I built it, tore it down after realizing it was too tall, and tried again. Then I realized it was too narrow and tried again. Then, like little stonemason Goldilocks, I got it just right.

Looking at the finished frame, I thought, Whoa. How am I going to build this thing? What have I done to myself?

I guess I’ll set the first stone and trust that it will come together from there.

I’ll find out tomorrow.

Did I really hear a voice? Because I was just wondering the same thing. What am I building? Maybe that voice is in my head.

“Looks like a lot of work.”

No, it’s real. It’s coming from the other side of our back fence.

We share fences with three neighbors. The neighbors on our left and right are part of our daily life. We wave in passing, are vaguely aware of each other’s comings and goings, chitchat about the grass browning out in August, and commiserate about the cold while shoveling out after blizzards in February. We don’t just share a fence. We share the experience of life on the same street.

Our third set of neighbors, on the other side of our back fence (or are we on the other side of theirs?), live on a different street. They might as well be in a different town. Or a different world. We’ve lived here for six years, and somehow we’d never met. I’d never even seen him before.

We got to talking.

His name is George. Last night, he texted us wondering if their new cat had slipped under the fence. He let us know later when Pip was home safe and sound.

Turns out, George is very nice. Even if he does live on another street.

I often feel that way about stone walls. You spend much of the day with your eyeballs inches from your work. And there’s not much else to do while walling but think. Staring at and thinking about your work all day is not a recipe for objectivity.

One minute you’re looking at the best thing you’ve ever built. The next, the same arrangement of stones looks more like a pile of…

I placed the last stone in Il Nocciolo yesterday and couldn’t stand to look at it for another minute. I was too close to it. The chasm between what I intended to build and the work staring back at me was too wide.

Instead of rushing to judgment, I decided: I’ll look again tomorrow with fresh eyes.

Tomorrow came and did its work.

Twenty-five years is slightly more than half my life. I’ve worked on a lot of projects during that time, all over Maine and occasionally farther afield. But what if I’d spent those same twenty-five years working on one project? That’s essentially what Harvey Fite did. And then some. When he began Opus 40 in 1939, he estimated it would take forty years to complete.

Forty years on the same project.

It’s a romantic idea, dedicating yourself to a single undertaking. A life’s work in the most literal sense. Like a young woman entering a monastery, knowing she’ll never leave. Harvey’s commitment was as monumental as the work itself.

I’m wired a little differently. Just recently, projects have taken me to an island in Penobscot Bay, the Lakes Region, the western Maine mountains, and my own backyard. Different people. Different stone. Different problems to solve. And, perhaps most importantly, different coffee shops. I could probably monetize my internal map of where to get a good coffee and a breakfast sandwich.

I’d like to work with stone for forty years. I’m on track if my body holds up. I don’t feel the urge to build one massive, lifelong work. But I’m grateful Harvey did.

Other than second-guessing my choice of a bagel shop, I wasn’t nervous about this meeting. I’ve been to a lot of them. Sometimes, especially if it’s a project you really want, a little doubt can creep in. While you’re making small talk before your pitch, you’re wondering if you’re even qualified to be sitting there.

Today’s meeting is different. It’s the same table, but I’m sitting on the other side of it.

I have an idea for a project. I’m hoping the person sitting across from me can help bring it into the world. So, I’m listening. I’m asking questions. But mostly, I’m remembering what it feels like to sit on that side of the table. I’ll be back over there soon enough.

I’m rooting for him.

When we build with stone, we aim for the work to outlive not only our clients, but their children and grandchildren as well. Well-built stonework dates back to the furthest reaches of antiquity. That seeming permanence is part of what draws us to stone. Yes, “even walls fall down,” but for all intents and purposes, the good ones last forever.

It appears the walls I built last spring will have the lifespan of a house fly.

I knew before I started building that the clients were reserving the right to change the design after they saw the built work in person. I tried to keep this in the back of my mind while I was working. But something happened after all that time transporting stone across Penobscot Bay, living on a small island for weeks at a time, fully engrossed in the work and nothing else. I couldn’t keep my relationship to the work casual. I caught feelings.

In a world defined by impermanence, does it really matter if a wall lasts a few months or a few thousand years? In cosmic time, that’s not even the blink of an eye. Because these walls, in their present form, won’t see one winter, does that devalue the work that I put into them? In my better moments I’d say no. That work still matters. That effort still matters. That time spent working inside a craft that I love still matters.

I’ll tear parts of these walls down and rebuild them as best I can. That’s the work. Putting your heart into something, even if your heart gets broken.

The flies didn’t appear to bother him. His enthusiasm for the wall he wanted me to build seemed to keep them at bay, but it couldn’t solve his real problem: budget. Money for the project was tight. But what he did have was a haul of beautiful granite salvaged from the demolished dam, and the willingness to let the wall become whatever those stones and the budget allowed.

Instead of a conventional dry laid stone wall, I designed one with openings and gaps between the stones. The road-facing side is carefully fitted, with pretty faces and tight joints. The back is more raw, more utilitarian. It’s not a recreation of the dam, but it hints at it. It keeps some of the history alive.

It’s not the wall I would have designed with unlimited resources. I’m glad Ken brought more enthusiasm than budget.

I soon learned that a dam had been built there on the Crooked River in the 1820s. A few years ago, after falling into disrepair and blocking salmon from reaching Sebago Lake, it was removed. And the locals had feelings about it.

One of Ken’s neighbors told him, “I’ll never forgive you for removing my dam.” Another angrily exclaimed, “That dam has been there forever!”

Two hundred years is hardly eternity. But I get the sentiment.

When I was a kid, I used to love driving by those old decaying wooden ships rotting beside the Wiscasset Bridge. Growing up in Boothbay, that was about the only thing I liked about Wiscasset. And I’m glad they didn’t tear down the Carleton Bridge in Bath when they built the new one. That’s the bridge we took to get to my grandparents. We grow attached to the things that surround us. We develop a personal history with them. Our lifetimes do feel like forever.

When the Edes Falls dam was torn down, the town salvaged the granite. We built the wall from those same granite blocks, their old drill marks and stone-dog notches still visible after two hundred years.

For those who remember the dam, I hope the wall honors their connection to it. But what about those too young or too new to Naples to remember it? For them, this wall, so new and unfamiliar, will someday feel like it’s always been there.

Before we started, the public works crew warned us not to leave tools lying around. Cars come and go. Sometimes they sit in the driveway for hours. Dave and I keep an eye out for the unneutered Cane Corso that occasionally wanders over like we’re spotting for grizzlies.

Across the river are some remnants of an old stone dam and a sandy spot where you can wade in up to your knees. After a particularly long day of work last week, and no time to drive home before meeting friends for dinner, it seemed like a good place for a river shower.

I don’t know how clean I got, but I stood there in the river in just my shorts, scrubbing the dirt and rock dust off with a washcloth, watching it make little cloudy pools in the water before swiftly dispersing. I imagined this was how the first settlers cleaned up while building the first homestead in Naples on this site in 17-something.

My brain pulled me out of the moment, as it often does. I wondered what the scene looked like from the other side of the river. Probably just some guy who’d wandered over from the sketchy house.

The river carried that thought away too.

Even though we can’t see it from where we’re working, the river has a presence.

For a couple hundred years this granite held the river back.

The river won.

If we were south of the Mason-Dixon, I’d think he was being respectful. But we’re not. I think the honorific implies he forgot my first name. That’s ok. I forgot his too.

It’s a little uncomfortable trusting someone you’ve just met with the foundation of your wall.

“Have you been to the site yet?” he asked, a little chewing tobacco pressed between his lower lip and front teeth.

That made me feel a little better. Almost every equipment operator I’ve ever worked with likes a little nicotine. The poor guy probably couldn’t get away with smoking on the job.

“She’s all prepped for you.”

Before he started, I communicated my needs for the base as best I could. Then I left him and his crew to it, taking a leap of faith that we had understood each other, even though we couldn’t remember each other’s names.

When I got back to the site, it was clear we had.

When building with stone it’s wise to use the forces of gravity and friction in your favor. I’ve gone a different route.

I plan to tear this down when I’m finished. If I don’t, nature will do it for me.

And then I’ll build it again. And likely again after that.

And then I’ll wheelbarrow the stones out of our backyard, load them back onto the truck, and haul them away to be part of some future project.

The only traces of the structure will be the lessons I learned building these rough drafts.

I’m used to long drives for work. But today, my commute is about forty feet, on foot. I’m building a stone feature in the backyard. And traffic is brutal.

Just as I was heading out the door to get started, I remembered two emails I had to write, right now. I’d better make another cup of coffee first.And maybe a second breakfast once Eliza's done with the kitchen.

I finally made it through the bottleneck to the back door, where I picked up a four-legged hitchhiker. He said he wanted to work but we ended up played fetch until he settled into the lawn with a chew toy.

I got my hammers out. Before I could take a swing, Vim was on the move again, munching his way across the backyard like a billygoat. A mouthful of grass. A stick. A chunk of woodchip. The little dude is still feral.

I figured I should step in before he got to Eliza’s new plants, so I took him back inside.

And while I’m in here, I’d better make one more coffee.

She appeared from the vestibule, glanced at her clipboard, and called, “Joe.”

I followed her silently into a stale little room furnished only with a padded chair. She swung the folding arm down, locking me in for the world’s most boring rollercoaster.

“Which arm?”

I told her and she pushed up the corresponding sleeve.

Her face changed. A smile appeared. Then she laughed out loud.

“I didn’t know if you were rich or worked outside, but there’s my answer.”

I laughed too.

“I guess rich people don’t have farmer’s tans,” I said.

“Neither do nurses,” she replied.

We kept joking until she had all the blood she needed.

As she walked me back to the lobby, she asked if I had to go to work now.

“Yeah. My boss is an a-hole.”

Eliza’s brother and father helped us design and build the panels with cedar and wire mesh. That’s an understatement; we never would have tackled it without them. In one heroic weekend we assembled the panels, dug countless holes, many of them twice after realizing our initial math was wrong, and installed the posts and panels everywhere except along one stretch bordering a neighbor’s property.

That neighbor planned to put up her own fence soon. It made sense to tie into hers later. In the meantime, we threw together a temporary fence out of chicken wire and metal stakes.

That temporary fence lasted the rest of Sasso’s life.

It was still standing when Vim showed up a few years later. He’s a little more curious about what’s happening on the other side of it, and we’re a little more concerned about keeping him safely contained. When Eliza suggested replacing the old janky thing with something more secure, I realized I’d stopped noticing the fence years ago.

Once my attention returned to it, I couldn’t believe how rough it looked. Bent stakes. Sagging wire. Random reinforcements added over the years.

I build fences for a living, only they’re made of stone. Walls meant to last generations.

One of the most important fences in my life was thrown together as an afterthought, meant to last a month or two.

Instead it held together an entire chapter of our lives.

I set the last stone an hour before the boat home left the island. I took down the batter frames and packed up my tools: shovels and rakes, a cutoff saw, a transit in its big clunky case, a dolly, two long lining bars, insulated tarps that never got used, and a large assortment of hammers and chisels. All of it stuffed into the Subaru along with workboots and raingear, dirty clothes, leftover food, coffee-making contraptions, and seltzers. Lots of seltzers.

Scott, the caretaker, waved goodbye while blowing oak leaves.

I got my parking spot at the ferry terminal and wolfed down a sandwich as the boarding process began. A few hours later I was home again, eating Friday-night-pizza with Eliza and Vim. A whole temporary world that had occupied my mind so completely for weeks suddenly disappeared.

And now it’s on to the next one.

What was I supposed to do? Not wave to that friend of a friend of a friend’s uncle I met once at a birthday party when I was seven?

When I go back to Boothbay now, there aren’t many waves. In Brunswick there are none. But I found a place where that tradition exists.

I know one person on North Haven. But for three weeks, everyone I passed on the short drive between the inn and the jobsite waved at me. And I waved right back.

I didn’t realize until then how much I’d missed that.

Two men and a woman step out of the ticket office in safety yellow jackets and hats. They huddle together and look out at us, lined up in our cars and trucks, waiting to get on the ferry to North Haven. The woman points at me in my one-ton and says, “That’s our twenty-six footer.”

After finishing my first job on the island two years ago, I sat up on the open deck for the ride back to the mainland. The Fox Islands faded slowly behind us. The Camden Hills grew larger ahead. These waters are some of the most beautiful in Maine, and I wasn’t going to be one of those guys sitting in his truck staring at his phone the whole time.

Now that the trip has become more routine, I realize I was too quick to judge.

Today I’m one of those guys. Sitting in my truck on a boat on the ocean. The twenty-six footer. Making my morning commute with a load of rocks.

Forbidden sleep is the best.

Then I heard a tap, tap, tap and slowly realized it was coming from my window. A wild-eyed man with red hair was peering in at me.

“Sorry to wake ya. Those are some nice rocks.”

I’ve fallen asleep on planes while idling on the runway before takeoff. Trains and buses have the same effect. Now I can add ferries to the list. It’s about an hour and ten minutes to cross from Rockland to North Haven, and I can’t read or write or even look at my phone without getting nauseous. A nap feels almost inevitable.

I rolled down the window. My new friend said he’d laid a few stones in his day and thought the rocks in the back of my truck would stack up into a nice wall.

I hope he’s right.