Leftovers

Doing some back-of-the-napkin math, there are about three thousand individual stones in this wall. There’s another twenty-five percent of that left scattered on the ground, waiting to be cleaned up when the snow melts.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with those rocks lying there. They simply weren’t chosen.

I almost feel guilty leaving them out of the wall. With all the selecting and rejecting, the rejoicing when they fit and cursing when they don’t, you start to know them individually. If I pile these leftovers up and use them in a wall ten years from now, I’ll remember some of them. Oh yeah, I almost used that one in Manchester, on that tricky part on the north side, about halfway up the wall.

I’m not going to go home and weep for the leftovers. We all want to be chosen. They got left behind.