Bad Fences, Good Neighbors

Half our fence fell prostrate before Mother Nature as She decided that 50 degrees was too magnanimous a December fortune for Her children in Ohio. The error was sternly corrected with a high-winded 30 degree drop over the next few hours.

My neighbor and I meet the next day to walk the line, one to a side. “It never was a good fence,” I tell him. He says it doesn’t matter that it’s down for awhile. “I can take Duke out on a leash,” he says. “Don’t worry, he can poop in my yard,” I reply.

A New Year dawns, the temperature stretches for 60 to greet the second week. Remembering my duty, I apply hammer to nail and stake to earth to raise the fence back to a useful, if not perfect, condition. I rejoice in the afternoon spent in the sun. I remember back to earlier existence when I purchased these same boots, this Carhartt jacket. When afternoons and often whole days were lost in the silence of the woods. When I earned my paychecks turning trees to cord wood, wrestling boulders, caring for the saplings of another harvest. Though today I’ve neglected most of my responsibilities, I sleep the deseved sleep of satisfaction in work well-accomplished.

But Mother Nature disagrees. She does not think that a few e-mails should be sufficient to cover my ass. She sends Her winds again. She taunts me with Her warmth and then sends Her storm. Feeling the fear of a five-year-old as the house shakes/shudders/moans, I scramble to the safety of sleep with covers pulled high over head and dread blowing all around me.

I awake to find my fence face-down again, genuflecting to its Mistress. My still-sharp stakes torn up and strewn about. Like shark’s teeth on the beach, they give evidence to a once great creature, now no more. Today, I must mend the wall again. Armed with twice the nails, deeper stakes, but a broken will, I buttress again without complaint.

It never was a good fence. And now there is poop in my yard.  But I am happy.