Today, we exhausted ourselves physically for the second day in a row. It seemed simple: take this wall of dirt and rock and move it to the top of of the structure. The landscupting results would have pleased Olmstead: we moved a small mountain and created a park from the rubble.

Here in Piedra (which means “stone” in Spanish), the activity is both aerobic and anaerobic. On my Massey-Ferguson, I strain my arms, legs, and core–and my neck muscles, especially, craning backwards over my shoulder to avoid a post or a boulder. With almost every load, I have to dismount, lift rocks, breadloaf to breadmaker, into the bucket.

The goals are multiple: Greg dissembled the wall with the excavator, and I hauled the thick, rich, sticky mud up to cover the container to create the cave.

G moved boulders, and I mandated their placement and angle. By evening, I still hadn’t done any writing, but I set the table for company, another living art.