Friendship and Stonework Grow More Beautiful With Time

I heard about Jane building walls, and I had some tumbledown walls on my property, so I tried to get in touch with her.

Jane DeWitt: I was in my late 20s or early 30s then. It was about 13 years ago. I had come to the idea that stonework was what I loved to do and that I’d keep doing it as long as it made me happy. I grew up on a dairy farm a couple miles from Mary Beth’s farmhouse, and I was deciding that this [town] really was my home. I was just trying to put together a life in this rural place.

Beck: Mary Beth, in your email you mentioned that you had a hard time getting ahold of Jane to hire her.

Mary Beth: Yes, she’s very popular and hard to pin down. I knew I wanted her, because every time I saw a stone wall by Jane DeWitt I thought it was beautiful. The way I did pin her down was: Someone she was working for had a dog that wandered into the street. I brought his dog back to him. He was very grateful. I said, “By the way, is Jane DeWitt the one who is building your walls? I’ve been trying to get her for about a year now.” The next day, there was Jane, knocking on my back door.

Jane: I think I interrupted your bath.

Beck: What were your first impressions of each other?

Jane: Mary Beth was so kind and excited. Those are the kind of people I like to work for and with, because it’s so much fun.

Mary Beth: My first impression of Jane was: This is a woman of confidence. She’s not going to be a bullshitter. Even though she’s brilliant and has a degree in literature from Dartmouth, she was a spirit of nature. She loves browns and greens, and she was standing there with her long hair and perfect posture, and I said to myself: This is somebody that I want to connect with.

Beck: How did your relationship evolve from being a business owner and a client to being real friends?

Jane: One of the things that I like about my profession—but which also makes me hard to get ahold of—is that my work takes a while. And you’re usually working at someone’s home, so you get to have a rapport with people. We’re a chatty crew. I think Mary Beth asked if I would like to go bicycle riding, and I thought that could be fun.

Mary Beth: She had an old Subaru, and she would leave the windows open and play NPR while working on a wall. I hear this and I think, Wow, she likes the same radio station that I listen to. I had a pond [on the property], so I may have said, “Help yourself to the pond,” or something like that. There may have been swimming involved. It all happened very organically.

Jane: Swimming is something I love so much. Often on a hot day, even if she’s not there, I’ll go up and swim in her pond. It has become a refuge for me. It’s just a beautiful place that she’s created.