Stone walls defining fields of grassy greens and wildflowers, leading to woodlands of natural granite outcroppings and laurel are among my most pleasurable memories. Thank you.

[video:https://youtu.be/pvQYr9pcglg]

Good Morning from Connecticut, QMS. Great topic.

Here is a very informative article for stone wall geeks like me.

Likewise, Colonial-era books on farming, encyclopedias and recorded observations do not mention stone walls, Thorson notes. Instead of stone walls, Colonial farmers used rail and zig-zag fences made of wood — far more abundant at the time than stone — to pen animals. It wasn’t until the latter half of the 18th century that early stone walls were first widely constructed in New England.

Widespread deforestation exposed New England’s soils to winter cold — scientists estimate winter was 1 to 1.5 degrees Celsius colder on average during the Little Ice Age than it is today — causing them to freeze deeper than they had before. This accelerated frost heaving, and gradually lifted billions of stones up through the layers of soil toward the surface.

out in the valley on the downslope margins of the foothills, which is really a vast alluvial plain along the length of a fractured monster granite ridge. They aren't of very great antiquity, however and are mostly so low as to serve no real function beyond marking boundaries. The natives didn't go in for walls too very much, and the Spaniards and Mexicans used adobe and wood which are far easier to work with. That area is littered with rock and used mostly for grazing, somewhat putting the lie to all of those "If all of the land used for grazing were used for farming, then ..." because you could never clear enough rocks (new ones just keep coming up) to farm on any scale besides the fact that there isn't really enough rainfall for anything but the native weeds, bunchgrasses and stunted oaks.

Being seriously tectonic, we've got tons of hot springs. There is an area starting up around Mono where there are scads of small ones scattered along the length of old Hwy 395. It used to be pretty common to just pull off, find one and jump in. There are some quasi famous open ones down in the sink nw of Bishop, and a gob of developed ones, largely owned by "resorts" scattered across the desert from Palm Springs on down. There is a county park where the Anza-Borrego desert abuts the coast range called Agua Caliente that we like to go to when we're in the area. The place is lousy with birds, including some lazy roadrunners who like to patrol the parking areas to pick bugs out of the front ends of parked vehicles.

Far too many evergreens, even among the fruit trees, and, of course, cacti, so I'll go with Autumn instead of "fall":

Have a good one

Been to the hill and back. Missed a good conversation. Rain check, thanks.