Fences

...So I jumped on the fence and yelled at the house, Hey! what gives you the right
To put up a fence to keep me out or to keep mother nature in...

(From Signs, by Five Man Electrical Band)

I actually like Tesla’s version of Signs better, but that’s another story. I want to talk about fences. There are countless stories, sermons, and poems extolling the positive and negative imagery and reality of the fence. I've been pondering the subject of fences since we began building a new fence. The picture above is the fence that we built this past weekend (re: previous post on “concrete”). This particular fence wasn’t built to keep anybody out or for any other reason other than to protect our horses. You see, horses are pretty dumb animals that can fatally wound themselves in the most obscure of ways.

Two-inch gap at the bottom of the fence? Horse can get its foot stuck and die.

Drop a nail? Horse can step on it and die.

Killing or maiming a horse is that easy! Don’t believe me? Just ask my friend Susie…she has seen it all!

So do I have any deep or philosophical thoughts about fences? You bet I do…DON’T EVER BUILD THEM! Hire someone else to do it! We (Mark, me, and my neighbor) started early Saturday morning, and quit mid-Sunday, and still weren’t done. We sank 34 giant posts into ground that was hard as rock, cut and mounted 340 ft of boards, and we didn’t even get to start running the wire. (I get to spend half of my Friday doing that… oh, joy). It was 132 degrees on Saturday, and we worked so hard that Mark nearly died from heatstroke. OK it was actually only 90 degrees, and Mark got a really bad headache, but it sure felt a lot worse. I drank more than a gallon of fluids throughout the day, and still lost 5 pounds (that’s true, not an exaggeration). Just today(Wed) my hands began to feel normal, and not cramped and sore. I also officially became a redneck…not because I started saying ya’ll and dating my cousin, but because the back of my neck was literally bright red from the severe sunburn. Yes, cowboy hats are not just a fashion statement; they actually serve a functional purpose (too bad I learned that AFTER building the fence).

Was it totally a bad experience? No. There were a lot of positives:

• I learned a lot about my neighbor; he is a fairly fascinating guy and has some interesting stories.
• I learned about the cowboy hat thing.
• I learned how to build a fence…there is a lot more to it than I realized.
• I discovered that I don’t like building fences; hate it as a matter of fact.
• I also have a tremendous sense of accomplishment, as this was a fairly large task.
• I spent almost two full days working with Mark, and he didn't try to kill me...even seems to still like me a little bit. As I think about it, that is a pretty big deal, becuase the last time we worked on something together I walked away with a gaping would over my right eye.
• I’m gonna have a beautiful fence when we are done on Friday.

And although I have complained a lot, it will all be worth it to see the horses running through the pasture when we cut them loose on Saturday.