Fenceposts provide not a wall but a guide to life

About this time each year, after the snow melts but before the green of spring arrives, the ubiquitous fencepost appears stark and forlorn upon the prairie.

Like people passed each day on the street, fenceposts always have been there, marking boundaries. But in the barren landscape of March, they rear up from the horizon, bumping into our line of sight.

To some, a fencepost is but an obstruction, an indifferent object marking boundaries and dirtying the landscape.

Such people do not understand fenceposts.

• • •

Every spring in a never-ending project, my father would haul planks and post beams to the edge of our land and engage in a day or two of fence building. At first I merely accompanied him, but somewhere around the age of 10 I began to help construct the fence line.

I grumbled at losing my childhood freedom, for fence building consisted of hard work. It involved slamming a posthole digger into the earth and pulling up pungent black soil heavy with roots. After the hole reached just the right depth, the post would be plopped in then pounded yet deeper with a sledgehammer.

Sweat beaded off my father's temples as he carefully swung; bad aim could split the post or bash the hammer against one's foot.

Each post had to be a specific distance apart as well or the planks wouldn't be long enough to nail into them. Sometimes a boulder or stump stood in the spot right where a hole had to be dug.

When finally done, we'd stand a ways back in the cornfield's stubble and for a long while admire how that fence stretched across the plain, each post fresh and sturdy with youth.

• • •

Some decry fences, saying they symbolize divisions of property and wealth that cause fights. I suspect they really are talking of walls. In New England, fences like that of Robert Frosts' "Mending Wall" typically are made of fieldstone. They have a bulk to them and seal out views.

My father would say fences prevent fights. Cows don't understand property lines. And whenever two farmers work adjacent fields, they'll often stop, lean against a common fencepost to share the latest gossip, trials and tribulations. The post marks a spot where they can share common bonds.

For them, the fence is no more a wall than the village well or the office drinking fountain could be.

• • •

I suppose that's why my father laughed when one spring while digging a posthole, the rebellious teenager in me couldn't help but recite to him Frosts' line "Good fences makes good neighbors."

• • •

During long walks taken through the fields, I watched our fenceposts slowly age with each passing year.

Sometimes, the posts withstood great indignities, such as when the ground swelled, lifting them just enough that the planks strained and cracked against them. Other times, storms pressed against a post until it leaned too far in one untenable direction.

Should the plank come off a post, it weakened the others. Each fencepost stood solitary across the field but depended upon the one next to it for support and strength.

Not all posts suffered. Some became the perch of meadowlarks who, splaying their breastplate of gold, would sing for a mate. As knots loosened in the wood, some became nests for bluebirds.

Other times, vines of multicolored blossoms wreathed around the pole.

A fencepost could be violated, a fencepost could be celebrated. But each told its own story.

• • •

During college while helping my father repair a worn fence we'd erected long before, when my only concerns were baseball and dreamy adventures in the stars, I asked him for advice about a girl I loved.

"The problem," he said, "is in how you're trying to solve your dilemma."

Oh great, I thought, some more of my father's obtuse wisdom. I decided to humor him and asked what he meant.

"Well, take this fence," he said. "It's going to be 100 feet long with posts 10 feet apart. How many posts do we need?"

"That's easy. Ten."

He grinned, shook his head at my mistake. "You need 11. Your error is in counting things rather than the spaces between them."

• • •

Old-timers say hedge fences last two years longer than those made of stone. My father always preferred to make fences out of wood, however, even though wind and rain tend to destroy them sooner than either the shrub or rock varieties.

As each of my father's fenceposts neared its end, the grayed and weathered wood often would not budge for it had became firm in the ground. It frequently leaned slightly to a side as the planks upon it bowed with age. The weeds grew elbow high, nature returning to swallow it back up.

Then, after a long winter and once the ground thawed, my father would shovel the earth away from the post's base, pull it up and plant a new one nearby. A new generation of fenceposts replaced the old, serving the same purpose as before, suffering the same affronts and witnessing the same joys, all connected by stalwart planks that formed a thin meandering line into the horizon.

(originally published March 3, 2003)