THE STONE BOAT that sled of thick oak planks with upturned front we called the stone boat dragged by a heavy chain through its nose over the plowed dirt so we could load it with stones that rose through the soil each spring the tractor set to go as slow as it could sometimes with no driver and the selection for that field that year varying: as big as my fist as big as my head the stone boat loaded full carried its rock harvest over the waves of furrows us on top of the heap or you could say riding its back dirt as rubbed into our skin as into the skin of the stones going to a pile we increased each year the stones had two weights one we pulled from the earth one we lifted to the top of the pile