craft
That is how our instructors Ian McKiel and Aurora Wahlstrom came to be connected to the center. They both teach stone masonry workshops but have also contributed an immense amount of their own skill and labor to the beautiful stonework running through the property. Aurora began as a workshop student, learning from Ian—who has been a full time stone mason for 20 years and owns his own masonry business in St. Paul. She now does stone masonry part time, is an arborist, and teaches alongside Ian. We were served three home-cooked meals made by Russ, a dairy cattle farmer from Mora, who’s there nine weeks out of the summer to manage the open-air kitchen. “We’re lucky to have him here. It’s difficult to find someone who can really cook,” Will said. After breakfast on our first day, our instructors took us to our two project sites—a dry stack retaining wall hugging a grouping of currant bushes near the castle, and a wood stove surround in a bunkhouse-in-progress, a replica of the “hut” of famous arctic explorer Ernest Shackleton.
We learned the basics first: how to select rocks, tools of the trade, why our local stone breaks the way it does, and proper lifting technique. Then we split up into two groups and jumped right in, learning from our instructors and from each other. My preference was working on the dry stack wall near the main building. I liked the simplicity of working with just one material, and being outside. The prospect of building a wall made up of thousands of stones with no prior experience was daunting. Before my hands felt hundreds of different rocks and before my brain started to understand how they need to fit together, it was frustrating work. It was difficult to abandon the desire to try make things when they’re not working. If a rock isn’t fitting in the space you have, it’s not the rock. You have to toss it to the side and find another, it’ll fit somewhere else. It was arduous work; we ended each day hot, tired, and sore. Our instructors patiently guided us through it all with great expertise and care. Like a tie stone sliding perfectly into place, in the afternoon of day two, I found a flow and started to work at a faster clip with less frustration. The thunk of a discarded rock hitting dirt and the rasp of stone sliding against stone became slightly addicting. “Has everyone found their zen state?” Aurora asked on day four. We all replied that we had. My mind was clear for the first time in a long while.
Workshop student Pamela and instructor Aurora work on veneering the Shackleton hut wood stove surround. Right: The dry stack wall takes shape.
ISSUE ONE, SEPT 2025
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