My phone rang at 7:15, a man from the state parks office, asking if he could come see the stone in person, and when he stood at the corner of Rays wall and read what was chiseled there, he said, Mrs. Hollenbeck, this changes the whole gravel permit, because this land was dedicated, and it is on the record.
The gravel companys man leaned on Rays stone wall and told me there was a glacial deposit under my back forty, the best gravel in the county, that theyd blast next door either way and my foundation would not survive it.
He did not know what Ray chiseled into the corner stone in 1972.
The flat stone I always thought held Rays initials actually read DEDICATED, with a date, because in 1972 my husband placed our back forty under a permanent agricultural and conservation dedication, recorded with the state, which means that ground can never be mined, blasted, or stripped for gravel, no matter what permit the town board approved.
Ray built that wall one rock at a time out of our own fields, and he cut one stone flat and chiseled it, and I scraped the moss off and found not initials but a dedication, and sent the photo to the state archive. The parks man came out to see it himself.
A recorded conservation dedication runs with the land forever. The gravel companys permit could not reach protected ground, and the blasting they threatened could not legally come near a dedicated preserve.
When the gravel man came back, I did not argue. I handed him the state confirmation and I showed him the word on the stone and I said, you told me to walk the land, so I walked it, all the way to this corner. Ray dedicated this ground in 1972. It cannot be mined. Take your glacial deposit somewhere my husband didnt already protect.
The permit did not survive it. There was no blasting. Rays wall still stands along the road, one rock at a time, and the back forty stays exactly as he dedicated it.
Your foundation wont survive the blasting, he told me. There was no blasting to survive, because Ray saw it coming in 1972 and chiseled the answer into a stone, one word, DEDICATED, and it protected the whole farm.