NOTHING LASTS FOREVER . . . NOT EVEN STONE

JULY 15, 2025 – In 2020 I constructed, painted and installed a sign marking the gateway to my “träd gård” (Swedish for tree garden) up at the lake, acreage where three years before I’d planted hundreds of two- and three-year white pine seedlings. I fashioned the five-and-a-half-foot-long sign out of treated lumber to ensure that it would last a good number of years—perhaps not as long as the trees, which I hoped would live to be 200 years and longer, but certainly beyond my own demise, which I was determined to defer for two decades—as if we have much control over such things. Little did I know in that worst year of the Covid pandemic, but all too soon I would face the mortal threat of another disease: multiple myeloma. Thanks to my extraordinarily good fortune, I had ready access to affordable and miraculous health care. If I might not live to be 97, as I’d earlier hoped, at least my lease was renewed for a few years. (As it turns out, every single one of us is a tenant on this planet earth; none of us is or ever can be a landlord.)

But even with a reduced lease term, I survived the sign that marked the entrance to the tree garden. Early last year, the waymark bit the dust, despite my provision for its long-term life expectancy—that is, use of treated lumber. What took out my work was a large dead oak that fate decided should fall precisely where it did, wiping out both the smaller trees that had served as sturdy signposts. The destruction was a reminder that nothing lasts forever, and in fact, some things don’t last nearly as long as they should or as we reasonably expect, as was the case with treated lumber.

As long-term readers of this blog might remember, last September, with substantial input and assistance from an architect friend, I designed and built elaborate replacement signage. Challenged by the precipitous destruction of the original sign, I strove for longevity in the design and construction of the new “gateway,” but I know that nothing can guarantee avoidance of premature calamity.

Now, of course, I’m deep into a far more ambitious project: my pergola-on-a-platform a long steep climb from the gateway. Again, my plans were devised to render the structure long-lasting. The year is 2025. I’m five years older than I was when dodging Covid, oblivious to the diagnosis and reduced lease term that awaited me. All of which is to underscore the inescapable: nothing lasts forever.

Except . . . I like to think . . . stone. Well, yes, I know: eventually the sun burns itself out, turns into a red giant, and absorbs what are known as the “rocky planets”—which means all the stone and stones on earth. But subject to that “end game” so far into the future, it may be called infinity, stone lasts forever.

Or does it? If citizens of Periclean Athens could catch a glimpse of the Acropolis today, as it lies in ruins, they might fairly conclude that the life of stone is finite. Even “newer” stone has longevity limits. When our family visited Mt. Rushmore when I was nine, the guide told us that the big white granite faces required constant maintenance, or they would eventually lose face as it were[1].

Today as I drove through the unincorporated hamlet of Stone Lake, Wisconsin—the last settlement before my destination (the Red Cabin)—I was surprised by another exception to the durability of . . . stone.

Stone Lake is the proverbial wide spot in the road. If it were any smaller, there’d be no need to observe the posted speed limit of 35 by canceling cruise control set at 64, then hitting “resume” one you’ve passed the little covered bridge just beyond the laundromat next to the coffee shop.

As long as I can remember, three special features have marked the town.

The first has been the old-fashioned, junior-sized Lake Wobegonian water tower that you notice only when you’re speeding along a cornfield about a half mile out of town and never when you’re up close. It’s as though the cruise control “cancel” button is linked somehow to your view of the water tower.

Ever since I paid attention to such things, the other two notable features of Stone Lake have been two small bar and grills facing each other across 70 as it leads travelers into and out of—don’t blink!—the little settlement. Both pubs have appeared reasonably well maintained—at least from an approach and side glance at 40 miles an hour. One place is clad in stained wood; the other, of stone and mortar—built by a master stone mason of yore and reflecting honorably the name of the town. In recent years, each outfit had a few simple picnic tables crammed into the narrow space between the road surface and the bar proper. When the weather was decent, a few motorcycles, often of the Harley-Davidson persuasion would be parked outside, and their riders could be seen partaking in the fruits of one or the other of the two establishments. Each time we passed by this mirror image, I wondered about the two enterprises. Located exactly across the street from each other, with windows illuminated by the same brands of on tap beer, what distinguished the one bar and grill from the other? The French fries? Were the owners good friends, ready to help the other when something went awry—a missed delivery of ketchup, perhaps, or broken plumbing in the men’s room? Or were the proprietors fierce rivals locked in a years’-long battle to run the other out of biz and out of town? And what of their patrons? Was there an unbreakable loyalty to one side of the road or the other? What prize-winning tale could be spun about these two little solar systems within the little galaxy of Stone Lake in northwest Wisconsin?

About a month ago, I noticed a FOR SALE sign outside the stone bar. I never slowed enough to read the finer print on the sign, so I didn’t know whether both the building and the business were for sale or only the former. Without more information, my persistent question—were the owners friends or rivals?—was left unanswered.

Today’s passage through Stone Lake began with the usual approach. About 200 feet before reaching the 35 MPH sign with a flashing yellow light on top, I hit the cruise “cancel” button with my right thumb. The sharp incline up over the railroad trestle was enough to pare down my speed without aid of the brakes. At the bottom of the slope on the other side of the trestle were the two bar sites. To keep my speed within 10 MPH of the posted limit as I passed them, I tapped the brakes.

All went according to custom, except . . . the stone bar was gone—razed, obliterated, erased from the face of the earth. All that remained was the basement, filled with what appeared to be (at 40 MPH) stone and concrete rubble.

I was stunned and not a little disturbed: I thought immediately of my wooden sign, my wooden pergola-on-a-platform and even dared to contemplate the ephemerality of my own existence. Before I reached the coffee shop, laundromat and covered bridge, cosmic reality had sunk in: Nothing—not even the stone of Stone Lake, Wisconsin—lasts forever.

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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson

[1] As I write this and reflect on it, I see the analogy between maintaining granite carvings of the four presidents and upholding their historical reputations. That latter effort requires continual “work,” given the “ravages” caused by revisionist history. For example, back in the summer of 1963, no one made much of the fact that two of the four presidents featured on Rushmore were slaveowners. Irrespective of what one does with that fact, it never even received mention or consideration. And few people considered the location and prominence of the carvings against the sordid history of the American Government’s treatment of the Oglala Sioux and its sacred ground, the Black Hills.