A few days ago, I posted some pictures from a nature preserve on Lake Ontario.

The lakeshore there has stretches of coarse gray sand and a fair number of fallen trees, where the clay bluffs eroded during winter storms.

And lots and lots of rocks, what they call a cobble beach.

I wanted to show what folks in the area did with all those “cobblestones.”

This is a one-room schoolhouse, built around 1820-24 and used for over a century.

I was happy to run across it and see the local historical society is maintaining it in fine shape.  But it did strike me, that perhaps because it was a schoolhouse and not a bank, store, or private residence, the stones may not have been selected with as much care as usual, for uniformity and smoothness.   It’s seven or eight miles from Ontario, so they may be rocks from local fields or a glacial dump and not the lakeshore, there’s moraines and eskers a bit farther south.  But nonetheless it’s a mellow, handsome little building.