But see, you prove my point. What you provided is a system of horizontal layout that ends where it begins and encloses a contiguous area. If one point in the description, including the origin point, shifted via earthquake, or if the survey marker (chiseled cross) were destroyed, the metes and bounds could still be reestablished.

The comment I was replying to said that plots are “defined by physical objects on the ground” and seems to imply that if an object referenced in survey work shifted that somehow legal ownership of property could physically follow, which is ridiculous. Lord Penny bags was replying to someone who made a similar point that I make, which is that metes and bounds exist on a surface or grid system, independent of a person’s observation of, say, a tree.

Another person in the thread made a more nuanced point that older survey techniques relied on such objects as trees, which is true, but are the rest of you really trying to assert that every time there is a mudslide or an earthquake or death of a tree that land ownership is suddenly in question?