An Ethics of Collecting Rock

I recall fondly the first time I ever took rock. A Sunday morning, early and cold, idling in the car on the shoulder of the outer Circle near where it hits Liberty Road by that ridiculous Halloween shop. Like much of New Circle, this stretch features a couple small road cutouts, and I was about to scout and grab rock that had fallen over a period of time into the ditch below. I wanted to harvest some of the fallen stone for a pathway and sundry other small projects for my home two miles away. The process would involve about thirty minutes of my time grabbing the rock on the side of the road and another fifteen minutes in transport home and unloading.

The central question I pondered that day, while waiting to jump out into the cold to try my hand at rock-thievery, is the same one I continue to ask myself five years later when traipsing around places that are supposed “Off Limits” to me, though my fear in having to answer it while collecting rock has subsided substantially over the years: “Well, just what the hell do you think you are doing here?”

Throughout the years, I have offered different answers to that question. Gathering rock on roadside cutouts, construction sites or back alleyways is a distinct activity; it tends to get noticed by passersby, and I've never checked into the legal specifics, so I at least try to mentally prepare for just such a question whenever I'm out.

Collectively, the different answers I've imagined to the question “what are you doing here?” form a sort of personal ethics for rock collecting, a justification for why and how I collect rock—in effect, an orientation for being in the world. On the whole, my rock ethic is rooted in ideas of usufructure (the taking of pleasure and profit from unused private land) and anarchist critiques of private property. Together, I have found they offer a solid foundation for trespassing onto under-used land in order to take discarded items not used by the property owners, particularly natural ones like rock. Though thankfully nobody representing authority has ever stopped me to have to answer this question (perhaps an indication that while I may be breaking the law, I'm not doing anything wrong), I've imagined two general reasons against taking rock from public or private lands—reasons my rock ethics must both question and take into account.

First, one might suggest that my collecting endangers myself or someone else. In asking how I might ensure that the process was as safe as any other daily driving activity in the U.S. (like commuting to work), I have had to ask and answer a number of related questions: can I come at off-hours time, when no workers are around. (If I do go at off-hours time, am I accompanied by a friend?) Is the shoulder on the side of the highway sufficiently wide for me to park for ten minutes? Is the rock safe to access, or is it in a position where it could do bodily harm to me? Is there a possibility that the rock will pose a driving hazard to others in the area. When the answers to these questions are “no,” I normally find another spot.

A second, more theoretical question, is a little less straightforward but I find much more intriguing. One might ask how my taking of rock damages the environment by manner of theft. In a strictly capitalist sense, this is what is we mean, I think, when we talk about the sanctity of private property. Here in the United States, we assume, by dint of deed, that the owner will proceed to make the best use of the land. We assume this because private property, in a capitalist society such as ours, is sacrosanct. The best use of that property is whatever the owner does to it, and, conversely, anything that the owner does not condone gets viewed as damaging to that environment in the sense that your very unsanctioned presence detracts from it—so long as environment is synonymous with a deed. Or at least, this seems to me pretty much what property rights enshrine in our laws, the unquestioned assumption that your use of land is less valuable (and correct) than a property owner's use.

Most of my rock collecting actions, of course, constitute a legal trespassing, particularly so in the case of construction sites. That the sanctity of property stands beyond thought, beyond question, is one of the reasons why I enjoy trespassing to collect rock. I want people to see what I do from their homes or cars—trespassing onto places both private and government affiliated—and to begin to question the primacy of private property. “Oh, look at that young hardworking lad over there! He's not hurting anything taking all that pretty Kentucky rock that X construction company ripped up during their construction of Y Estates! What a neat and industrious idea putting that rock to good use!”

A bit idealistic? Try collecting rock and the question will become a bit more intimate. It's something that I ask myself all the time while scouting out rock locations. Specifically, I ask whether I do damage to the property owner for taking discarded rock, stone whose main use to the owner is as a substance to be carted off to somewhere else—that is, as a waste product of that property. Don't believe me? Take a look at the many unfinished (and finishing) construction sites and the amount of rock sitting discarded, waiting to get hauled off, or watch that favorite cutout of yours over a couple years and wait for the county crew to come and cart it off.

Observing these things, and seeing how useful stone is, has lead me to note simple things about private property—notably that private property owners can both misuse and not use the land that they own, and that while trespassing might be illegal, it doesn't have to be immoral or wrong to do. It also didn't have to detract from a property's value. My taking of stone does no damage to the actual private property—only to the unquestioning idea of its sanctity.

Of course, the same rock ethic restricts as much as it frees. I am, after all, not suggesting that you start ripping the rocks off some bungalow on Desha. The question of damage to the environment is much wider than property rights. Do I want to take stone from somebody's house? Not hardly, unless I am invited to do so. Doing so would damage that person's home environment. Similarly, I might ask whether the stone I gather has a cultural value to the environment, as an old rock wall might, or if it held still a use value, if it is still in service to the area, as an overgrown stepping stone might be. In my accounts of environmental damages, these things hold more value to me than a deed paper.

Ultimately, such values necessary to answer the (as yet) unasked questions of “What are you doing, and why are you doing it?” force me to think beyond my environment as property, and to respond to it more as a commons, a place that we all have the responsibility and capacity for using and tending to. You'll be forced to ask the same sorts of questions, I'd wager, at some point while you gather rock for your projects. Though we may disagree on some particular instances, I trust you'll arrive at many of the same conclusions that I have.