It all started with a big muddy area at the end of the driveway.  After three years, all the grass was gone, except the most hardy half dozen springs.  My wife said, "We need to pave this!" so we did.  Extended the thing right through the gate into the back yard.  "Now if we just had a walk from here to the patio..." she added.

A fieldstone walk.  I had never built one, but the Better Homes and Garden's do it yourself books made it seem reasonably easy.  Here is how I did it.

	The area that was to become the walkway was covered with fairly well established turf and was located in front of a foundation shade planting.  (See left.) In adding the walkway, preserving the planting bed was foremost.  I had thought at one time to hire the job out, but figured it would cost too much and, besides, no one I could hire would keep the big steel toed boots out of my plants!
On the first Saturday, the work to remove the sod (which was transplanted to another area) was started.  This took pretty much the whole day to complete. In order to keep the digging in order, the path was laid out with sting and landscape tie nails.  (You know, those big long spikes used to nail landscape timbers.) Then care was taken to make sure to dig within the string guides.
	The next step was to dig out the area where the walkway would go to a depth of about 3 inches. (See left.)  I was surprised by how much dirt this turned out to be! I worked on this step in several two hour shifts after work.  By Thursday, the day before the stone was to arrive, I had it finished. Then, of course, it rained like mad!  I tried a few methods to drain the "mote" as my kids called it.  I was able to get a siphon to work at last. On top of the misfortune of rain filling my foundation, the stone was not delivered.  It is ironic, however, that the mortar mix and sand was.  This HAD to be kept dry, or I would have 26 paper covered rocks instead of mortar!
The stones were delivered the following Friday, a week late.  I started on the project early Saturday morning and was finished that evening. A layer of sand about two inches deep was spread in the trench.  The purpose of the sand is to provide a solid base that will allow easy leveling of the stones.  I learned the hard way that too little sand makes the job twice as hard.
	The next step was to apply a one inch layer of concrete mix.  I read many different accounts about how to do this best.  The idea I went for was to utilize a dry mix method that called for a mixture of Portland cement and sand. I found such a mix in the "ready to use" form at Home Depot labeled as a mortar ready-mix.  I spread about an inch of this on top of the sand.  The image to the left shows this -- the lighter colored substance is the mortar.
Next, the stones were placed in the mortar mix and situated as I wanted them.  More dry mix was spread into the cracks between the stones.  The excess was swept off and used as part of the foundation for the next section. None of the books I read really emphasized this "sweeping off" step.  The more you get off now, the less you will have to deal with later.  At this point, the idea with the dry mix method is that the mortar will absorb water from the ground and set up.  To assure that water was available, two methods were suggested.  One was to "wash" the dry mortar off the stones with a light mist. Yea, right.  To do this took more skill with the hose than I could muster, but it worked very well, as long as I didn't wash the mortar from between the stones too!
The other method was to soak the ground well around the construction, let it set, then wash off the dry mortar from the tops of the stones.  This worked better for me. However, while I was soaking the ground around one section, I was also moving the stones for another section.  As usual, I was not vigilant and when I looked up, water was running over the stones.  This turned out to be a pretty big mess.  I spent a ton of time dealing with this. The result of my mistake was that much of the dry mix on top of the stones actually set to the stones.  Removing this with the hose was impossible and I resorted to a steel brush.  Not much fun.  I was about half done scrubbing when my dad offered to let me use his 11 hp pressure washer.  Nice!  Although about 12 hours too late.  Finished the job of cleaning off the stones in about an hour with the pressure washer. While I had built the walkway in a day, cleaning up my mistakes essentially doubled the time I spent on the project.
There are a few things I'd do differently if I were to do this over.  First, I would get as little mortar on the stones as possible.  Secondly, I would soak the ground and sand thoroughly before spreading any mortar mix or setting any stones.  After the stones were in place and mix was spread around them, I would be sure NOT to get any water on the stones until the mortar between them was set.  Finally, I would get dad's pressure washer to start with! The final project ended up as one of my best accomplishments.  It actually adds a great deal of character to the planting behind it and, at nearly three feet wide, it is almost substantial enough to keep the bermuda grass from creeping into the bed!