A nice capstone will make a stone waller salivate. They are hard to find, but they are the icing on the cake for a dry stone wall, adding architectural detail as well as structural integrity.

As my dry stone terrace rose, I was on the lookout for capstones. Brent Coltman, a neighbour on nearby Horseshoe Lake Road who supplied much of my stone for the terrace project, suggested I pay his Dad a visit.

I met Wayne Coltman at his place south of Minden, in old farm country along the winding Deep Bay Road. In his early 80s, Wayne still works full time in the aggregates business, providing excavation and supplying materials such as gravel and sand for construction.  Wayne also keeps his hand in music, playing electric bass for a local band.

Finding a stone mecca

We hopped in Wayne’s white pickup and drove through the old farm on his property, touring his gravel pit before heading up a hill through the forest. We arrived at a small granite quarry littered with gorgeous slabs of pink and grey granite.

I could have my cake and eat it too!  The first granite stones that caught my eye would work perfectly for some extra steps leading to the cabin, I thought.  They were about four feet wide, two inches thick, and heavy. Wayne and I grabbed the ends, picked them up and walked them to the road.

“I have to take care of the fingers so I can keep playing music,” he joked, as he lifted half of a stone that must have weighed over a hundred pounds and was making my back ache. While he went back to get a bigger machine to haul the stone, I scouted out capstones for the terrace.

The June mosquitoes were feasting on me and seemed to especially enjoy the area behind my ears. I zipped up my jacket and started hauling capstones — picking them up and treading carefully back to the road, or sometimes dragging them if too heavy.

Special delivery

When Wayne returned, we lifted them into the bucket of his front-end loader and bounced back along the road to his house. I got about half of the stones into the back of our minivan, and drove them home carefully along the highway, making sure I did not have to brake in a hurry with the heavy load.

Later, Nadine and I came back to get the other half. Wayne was in his garage doing some welding repairs. He lifted his welding goggles, and put down his torch. We had a nice chat about his farm, which includes a gorgeous pond next to his house.

Back at our cottage on Minden Lake, I used a hand trolley to wheel each stone down to the project site. The terrace was coming up nicely but went slightly off level around its curve.  I knew I could bring it up to a better level with some thicker capstones on the curved end.  So I got busy getting the thickest stones over there first.

The summer side of life

Across from the cottage, the Bluebirds were busy feeding their chicks — swooping in with the food, and out with the guano. Under our cottage porch, Swallows had nested. The birds were active mornings and evenings, flitting around the farm fields next door.

While the female Swallow was away, I used a stepladder to climb up and see what was going on. The parents had created a soft nest of feathers and twigs on top of their sturdier foundation on top of our porch column. The first chick had broken its speckled egg and hatched, a tiny pink thing with a black beak. Three unbroken eggs showed that three more chicks were on the way.

Capstone dreaming

Working with the capstones, I used a chisel hammer now and again to chip off unruly edges, to get the stones to fit together better. When a stone was a bit wonky, I used little wedges to stabilize it.  To get the back edge straight, I fit in some small cheater stones that would look okay once the terrace was backfilled. Finally, I packed in a few small heartstones around the heavy capstones.

You can get into a trance while stone walling — the process triggers a kind of Zen state. You forget the mosquitos and keep walling. In your trance, you investigate, touch and place every piece of stone. There may be thousands in a small terrace like this one, a cascade of shapes, heft, tactility and colour. That night, it’s no wonder you may dream of stone.

Pretty soon the capstones were fitting together nicely on top, bringing the terrace up to a nice level of about 3 feet high. I would have more work to do with the terrace garden, and another retaining wall behind the cabin.

But for now, the icing was on the cake.