You stand at the edge of the quarry and the quarry is a hole in the earth where a hill used to be. The hill was stone and the stone was valuable and the valuable stone was cut and lifted and trucked away and the trucking away left the hole. The quarry is the negative space of a building. Every courthouse and post office and bank that stands in a city is a quarry somewhere else. The building is the stone that left. The quarry is where it left from. You look down into the quarry and the walls are sheer and the sheer walls show the layers of geology and the layers of geology are millions of years of pressure made visible by one century of cutting.

The Indiana Limestone Belt runs through Lawrence and Monroe counties in southern Indiana and the limestone from those counties provided the stone for the Empire State Building and the Pentagon and the National Cathedral and fourteen state capitols and the providing is the quarry giving the city its bones. Indiana limestone is called the nation's building stone because the nation built itself out of Indiana limestone. The quarries are enormous. The quarries are canyons cut into flat farmland and the canyons cut into flat farmland are the surprise and the surprise is that the flattest state has the deepest holes. The channeling machines cut the stone in blocks and the blocks weigh twenty tons and the twenty tons are lifted by crane onto flatbed trucks and the flatbed trucks carry the stone to the mills and the mills cut the blocks into the dimensions specified by an architect who has never been to the quarry.

Carrara in Tuscany has been quarried since Roman times and the quarrying since Roman times means the mountains are being slowly eaten. Michelangelo went to Carrara to choose his marble and the choosing his marble meant he climbed into the quarry and looked at the stone and the looking at the stone was the sculptor seeing the statue inside the mountain. The Pietà came from Carrara. The David came from a block that another sculptor had rejected and the rejected block becoming the David is the quarry's lesson which is that the stone does not know what it will become. The quarries at Carrara are white against green mountains and the white against green is the wound and the wound is beautiful from a distance and the beautiful from a distance is not the experience of the men who cut the stone. The men who cut the stone breathe dust and the breathing dust kills them slowly and the killing them slowly is silicosis and the silicosis is the quarry's price.

In Vermont the granite quarries at Barre are the deepest in the world and the deepest in the world means the Rock of Ages quarry is six hundred feet deep and you can stand at the rim and look down six hundred feet into blue-gray granite and the looking down six hundred feet is the vertigo of industry. The granite from Barre became headstones and the becoming headstones means the quarry is connected to death at both ends. The workers died cutting the stone. The stone became the marker for other deaths. The Italian and Scottish stonecutters who came to Barre in the eighteen nineties were the best in the world and the best in the world died young because the best in the world breathed granite dust eight hours a day. The labor movement in Barre was fierce because the workers knew they were dying and the knowing they were dying made them unwilling to also be exploited.

You swim in the abandoned quarry on a summer afternoon and the water is green and cold and impossibly deep and the impossibly deep is the depth of the stone that was removed. The abandoned quarry is the swimming hole and the swimming hole is the reclamation and the reclamation is teenagers jumping off the ledge into water that fills a hole that men spent decades cutting. The water does not know it fills a quarry. The water fills the lowest point. The lowest point was made by dynamite and channeling machines and men with hammers and the men with hammers are gone and the machines are gone and the dynamite is gone and the hole remains and the hole fills with rain and the rain becomes a lake and the lake becomes the place where you swim on a hot day in July. The quarry. The hole where the building was. The absence that became a presence. The wound in the earth that healed with water.