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It is also a treatise on human relationships, to places and to other people; and the meaning these relationships will always hold in a person's life, even when severed. A moving testimony to the power of art, of finding the extraordinary in the everyday and acting upon your instinct. Having discovered a link between Lincoln’s mediaeval stone masons and their counterparts at Nidaros Cathedral, Trondheim, she realised the ancient St Olav’s pilgrim’s path from Oslo to Trondheim offered the perfect challenge. Once done, she then takes it from Orkney where it was found and carved, across the sea and on a 500 km pilgrim trail across Norway.
The story of her dragging a stone from Orkney to Trondheim in Norway becomes compelling and we share her determination to arrive at her destination despite the odds. By that time, Searle was a qualified stone mason who’d completed a three-year apprenticeship at Lincoln Cathedral. Footprint stones” such as those found at Dunadd and Kintyre are thought to have once been used in ancient rituals by kings and travellers, and part of Searle’s mission involved inviting people she met on her journey to “draw the wisdom of forebears” from their contact with the rock. But what is really interesting is her analogies from her deep knowledge of stone, of geology and of mythology that provides the bedrock for exploration of contemporary issues - of young love and co dependency to family fissures and body weight issues.There is a journey of relationships, both with her travelling companion, her own past, and the stone itself, again, which mines depths of emotions, understanding and tolerances. Weathering via salt deposition is normally the stuff of textbooks but here it is presented in an almost alchemical vividness, with nomadic ‘wandering salt grains’ either wreaking havoc or ‘leaving politely’ depending upon the composition of the stone, ‘causing little harm but thickly crusting on the surface, like a clutch of mushrooms’. Her writing often strays toward the profound, again in such an easy manner that while it might echo the medieval mystics it is nevertheless rooted in her lived experience as someone who has dragged a forty-kilogram stone along a path for two months.
Intrigued by the impossible notion of a rock being used as a seaworthy vessel, Searle began hatching a plan to create her own “Orkney Boat” and embark with it on an audacious voyage. Stone Will Answer is a truly remarkable book, a beautifully crafted tale of an artist's extraordinary journey.I heard the author speaking on Radio 4 and I was impressed by how thoughtful, reflective and honest she was about the unusual Pilgrimage journey she had made with her stone. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories. For many of us the path to finding stonemasonry as a profession and learning how to work stone is, like Searle’s, circuitous, part-luck, part-dogged determination and part the generosity of strangers recognising a kindred soul. Storied impressions and whom we feel compelled to wield in the titanic efforts of believing in being human.
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