The Stone Walls of Resthaven

Like most historic New England properties, Resthaven is laced with stone walls, intact and untouched by a developer's back-hoe. The walls' positioning on age-old property lines indicate that they have stood in place for well over 200 years. One of the most charming attributes of antique stone walls, which cannot be truly replicated by anything newly built, is the abundance of moss and lichen covering the surface of the stone. Years of exposure to extreme New England weather create the timeless blend of colors and textures; the bright springtime greens and deep greens of new and old moss, and the opalescent light grey-blues of lichen. A charming blueprint saved from 1912 shows Resthaven's 130 acres, delineated not by the straight lines of a ruler, but by drawings of stone walls, punctuated with landmarks such as The Red Oak, The Skating Pond, and Indian Rock. The blueprint is a link to the not-so-distant past, when our land was not just an antiseptic drawing of straight plot lines and numbers sitting at the assessor's office, but rather a living thing with many unique and special features which we knew by heart.