Dawn comes late to the Mad River Valley — the sun has to climb the ridge before it reaches Warren's dooryards — and by the time it does, the drives are already plowed and sanded, dark and open under a white morning. LaRock Property Maintenance works the valley floor and the roads that climb toward Fayston and Moretown: mowing and edging through the green months, spring and fall cleanups, brush hogging the field edges back, irrigation and new lawns set in by sod or seed, road grading where mud season has had its way. Their dry-laid stone is the part that stays — walls, patios, walkways, steps and entryways fitted stone to stone without mortar, held by gravity and a good eye, settling into the hillside as though the ledge had offered it up. For the houses that stand empty between visits, they hold the keys and keep watch. You can read the whole trade in the shape of a yard: an edge that keeps its line, a walkway sitting dead level, a drive cleared before anyone in the house is awake.