Recycled walks

I won't forgive Wesleyan for pulling up all the ancient bluestone slate walks on High Street and replacing them with pedestrian (pun intended) concrete.

But I am pleased to report that at least some of those sedimentary slabs, or slab fragments, to be precise, are being put to good purpose here in Middletown.

While on a walk today, I bumped into Natt Holmes, a counselor and social worker who works at Middletown High School, as he was building a beautiful stone wall for Izzi and Jeff on Columbus Avenue.

When I asked about his labors, he said, "It's another hobby. I love doing it."

Well, his labor of love will be a complement to the neighborhood. With painstaking work, Natt, along with the resourceful homeowners, have scavenged and carried abandoned fieldstone, granite and brownstone as raw material for the wall from construction sites around the city. Always with permission of course. The wall which adjoins a post and beam structure they have built adjacent to their bungalow-style home.

Wesleyan gave the wallmaker and the homeowners permission to use some of the slab fragments removed from the walk on High Street.

As for Natt, who works 60 hour weeks at the High School, the thought of moving, cutting and shaping stones on a beautiful Saturday is less like work, and more like practicing an age-old art.

Where the bluestone ends

Among my many other quirky passions, I'm a fan of old-fashioned sidewalks, those uneven, imperfect, root-lifted bluestone, limestone and granite stones which have served for a century or more as pathways for human traffic.

Think of all the historic personalities who may have passed over the beautiful old stones on High Street, and maybe you'll grieve with me when you see them pull up yet another old slate walkway and replace it with more reliable, but less aesthetically-pleasing concrete. The concrete is more easily maintained, and less likely to cause a lawsuit, but it has far less soul.

And that's what happened today on High Street. In the same location where a large, ancient beech was felled, Wesleyan crews were busy this morning tearing up the bluestone.

The pile of vintage slate was carted away, likely to have a second life in a patio for some McMansion, (though one hopes it'll reappear somewhere on campus) and we'll be left treading on the undeniably safer, more consistent, more easily plowed with fast moving snowblowers, 21st century sidewalk.

Until today, the walkway on High was history. Now, it's just another sidewalk.