Fences

January 13, 2014

Greetings from this side,

“Something there is that doesn't love a wall,”
Robert Frost

In my wanderings I have been in places without fences.  Places where the horizon is anywhere you look, where the sky and the earth fit together in the way they have since the time before man. It is these chunks of the world that a fence would be unseemly, an intruder.  A distraction from what is meant to be. 

It is not something you notice right away.  Until you are in the rest of the world, and you realize the lines are back.  The thousands of miles of metal and wood and stone and concrete that we depend on to keep us in and others out.    Split rail, chain link, barbed wire, stockade, stone, wrought iron, smooth wire, picket fences.

Fences don’t have personalities or attitudes.  They are billboards for those who put them up.   The tall forbidding chain link, topped with concertina wire, that gives a menacing message.  The wattle fence, woven from branches, that tells you someone spent time and energy devoted to this project to serve a purpose but give nature its due.  Iron fences with spiked tops, decorate fortresses with important people inside.  Some fences are built so you know you are welcome, with stone paths cut through them or gates with no locks, that seem to say ‘Welcome’.   Fences around graveyards give off a message of another kind, confusing and dark.

I grew up in the city, where fences were what shaped our yards gave definition to our world.  They were the lines of the rectangle that held ‘home’.  It was where you were supposed to be when the street lights went on.  We hung from them, hopped over them, hit balls over them, hid behind them. 

In some neighborhoods they seemed pointless; there was so little room between houses it didn’t matter enough whose dead grass started where.  But like someone said, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’  And so they hammered together and bolted in and anchored into the earth.  And the tiny space shrinks in their shadow.

Fences show where the cattle should turn away from the road.  They give a place for the snow to gather.  They are something to lean on while you tell the girl next door what you meant to say when you were too shy.  It is where the kids can hang the beach towels to dry.  The fence is innocent, inanimate.  Sometimes its purpose is simple, other times there are meanings to be read.

Fences define what’s mine from yours.  They keep dogs in, or out.  They protect  children, or keep the roses safe from passing suitors.  They keep the chickens in, keep the hunters out.  They protect the garden from invaders, or give the ivy a place to play. They can add character, bring definition to a space, and contribute to the architecture.  They extend the mark that man wants to make on his land that says ‘I live here.’

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In my wanderings I have been in places where there are always fences.  I go by them until I don’t notice them anymore.  They have become a natural part of where people are. 

I have met people at the gates in these fences.  Some stand to welcome a passing stranger, others to guard, rake in hand, against a passing stranger.  Some I see pacing inside the split rail, caged.  I see loneliness between the gaps in the pickets.  And I sense that for some of us the fence is in our minds long before there is a post in the ground.  Sometimes we carry them wherever we go.

I know that in our world these fences, these obstructions, are necessary.  To keep order, to prove, to guard, to defend.  I don’t resent them as much as I once did, they have blended into the landscape now. 

But part of me, the part that doesn’t love a wall, wants to look away when I see the barriers that are obligatory to be a good neighbor or to protect, exclude, hide behind.  Sometimes a fence is our worst fears manifested in lattice and wire, and I tire of being reminded of them.

Some fences we put up around us to protect ourselves.  Sometimes they keep us in.  My role will always be to find the end of the fence where I can go out, or welcome in those who pass on the other side.

Hope this finds you pushing the gate,

David

Copyright © 2014 David Smith