I may have written about this already, in some form, but it would have been so long ago you are not going to remember either.

By this time last year, the yearly task, the task at hand, was finished. It is time to plant the garlic. I plowed and disked the garlic field, but that is as far as I have gotten. The garlic is cracked (the heads broken into their cloves) and I have found my ingredients for the pre-planting soak, and the seeds final inspection will take place when they come out of the rinse.

I am picking stones from the dirt of the same field I was picking them from when I was eleven. Picking stones, cleaning the field, getting them into the bucket of the skid-steer and dumped onto a pile on the southern hedge row. I like stones. I’ve built a lot of things from stones. My house. Fireplaces, walls, patios. I’ve been inside the Pharaoh’s chamber in Cheops’ pyramid, climbed the steps of the Temple of the Moon at Teotihuacan (the Aztec site north of Mexico City,) slept a night, alone, in the Temple of Ur in Petra, walked Roman roads, the Knossos stone road, spent an afternoon in a conical stone shepherd’s hut on the piedmont of the Italian Alps. All stone. Studied the Castros of northern Portugal and Galicia. All being the stonework of men, of our human past. Stone. Rocks. I have found Native American arrowheads right outside the back door of my cabin.

It’s here, the stonework. It’s no secret what man could do. Amateurs are amazed that such diverse stonework the world over can look so similar, they think it must have been done by the gods, or aliens, when in reality, to a mason, there is always a rational, human explanation, a way, even with tools as simple as sand, string, or a copper bladed axe. The Egyptian stonemasons lived together in villages near the great sites, and evidence was left that they liked to party, and their beer was, no doubt, superior to our stinking Bush-league, aluminum tasting wee. Stones, stones everywhere. The Earth itself is a stone. Still forming, but a rock. What? The third rock? The Third Rock from the sun.

I’m old now, to tumble the big ones, but there are techniques and lifting is the least of it. My fingers in the soil to grab the cobbles are covered in thin dust. The field is dry, no measurable dampness in over a month. The air is full of smoke from wildfires on two sides of the village, and the woods below the field is filled with grey smoke, greyish white, you can see it moving. I told my wife to keep a keen lookout around the house. The smoke isn’t coming from fires in Canada anymore, but from fires right here. It might rain tonight. I hope. Some rain on the soil, some moisture in the soil, will make the final tilling before planting cleaner, more productive, less loss to the wind.

We pried the biggest stones out with a large bar and a couple round-point shovels. Each plowing reveals different subterranean clunkers and when a plow blade meets an immoveable object, the blade of the John Deere plow pops backwards to prevent breaking the blade, or the rest of the plow, and I have to say, long gone John Deere, a blacksmith by trade, sure built the finest equipment. I don’t know how old my three bottom plow is -- I bought it from my family’s estate, it was Pop’s -- but it is the finest earth cutting tool ever invented. Some of the green paint is still flaked to the steel and I polish the blades, the plow sheers, with lithium grease when I am done – as taught. Whenever I am on the tractor plowing, I can’t help but think of potato farmer Jack Hoeffner and his big flat fields and how he loved plowing. He loved plowing. Flipping that soil. How clean it made everything. How it buried those weed seeds. Brought up minerals.

The field slopes to the west and catches the afternoon sun and from the higher spots I can see the mountain, Sam’s Point and Cragsmoor and the rest of Shawangunk ridge, both gleaming white from the cliff faces, or green, or pink and purple, like today, the leaf cover down. And at the end of the field, the highway, and across the highway, our roadstand and woods and greenhouse, far enough away to be quiet.

I am picking up stones and I can smell the earth on my dungarees and in the air and I can smell the approaching rain and I remember being in this field as a boy and the tractor and the stone bolt and my brother and father, the three of us walking across the field picking stones left behind by earth’s history, tossing them onto the stone bolt. This time of year, too, and then unloading the stone bolt to the point it could be turned over and then the ride home on the stone bolt like a snow sled, a Radio Flyer, soon to come, and home to the white house down the lane, green framed by spruce and yew. And in the house, it was almost dark now, and Mom had supper cooking and I remember it was white potatoes with pan-fried pork chops and a Waldorf salad. You see, I have written this before, just like this, before. Long before.