Of Fence

A Fence Post

That chain-linked fence that fronts my (God’s?) part acre—roughly a quarter if you really want to know—is on the eastern border of the plot. When I stand behind it looking out I can imagine seeing past the majestic Hudson, over the rolling hills of Westchester County, on past the calm waters of the Sound and then flat, crowded Long Island, and across the mighty Atlantic itself, and seeing, over there, finally, my “Roots”: a mass of land we once were taught to call “The Old World.”

These days, I suppose, those roots seem to have spread clear across the divide and started to choke off growth in my own backyard. The old, once beautiful Rose of Sharon is bent over, all but dead, it's being strangled by the poison ivy and admittedly, utterly regrettable lack of care; and the huge old maple behind it stands in imminent danger of further collapse (large parts of it have fallen, in these recent climatically changing years) and, not surprisingly, even the turkey vultures have abandoned their highly fortified nests. As well, my very scrubby waves of crabgrass seem less green than just a couple of years ago.

Oddly though, a cluster (a cluck?) of hens and a constantly crowing cock have taken to foraging on my and my neighbor's surrounding properties. I’ve yet to see how they manage to breach our fences. Clever birds, hungry birds. Nobody around here tries to discourage their daily invasions. Everyone knows that they’ve come from across the road where decades ago a working farm once stood; its barns and buildings now wink steadily at us, their various stages of decrepitude seeming to foreshadow further ruin. The year when I first moved here, I recall Nixon resigning in disgrace, and many copperheads crossed from the old farm across the road to scout out their new neighbor and its property. They weren’t impressed, apparently, for they’ve not yet returned.

Naturally, I’ve always had the usual suspects digging in and making themselves a home here: woodchucks, rabbits, squirrels, skunks, possums, as well as does and bucks when there are tulips to be had, but—chickens—well, that’s new. I hadn’t had chickens under my feet since that wonderful summer I spent on a Hurleyville farm back in 1950—wait—actually, no—I’d since stepped off a cruise ship onto a small British Virgin Island and scattered some surprised chickens. A large bear once tried to get into my yard, but all it managed to do was break the base of a fencepost. The gate’s been hanging crooked for years since; it merely looks as though it can keep out the uninvited.

On the south, west, and north of this small plot are the linked fences of my neighbors. All of them were either German or Scotch-Irish when I first came here, but to the west, now I have a young Dominican family homesteading. There have been deaths, of course, on all four of our properties over the years and we all now, except for the Dominicans, walk a bit slower, and are a little more bent each year, but we wave politely at each other when we can’t avoid it, and will even cast the slightest of smiles in each other’s direction when we must.

When I lean on the broken fence and stare out eastward toward my “Old World Roots,” I sometimes wonder what life would have been like if there were no fences up for us all these years.