Sagging fences… battered walls

“How long will you set upon people,
all of you beating them down,
As though they were a sagging fence
or a battered wall?” [Psalm 62:4]

At times when you have an idea, the process of bringing that idea to fruition can open up new ways of thinking, seeing, …being.

At least for me, that’s a bit of what’s happened with our project to enlarge the perennial garden in our backyard. As we removed more sod the other day to make way for the field stone, it occurred to me that what we’re engaged in is probably little different than those first stone walls laid down millennia ago!

Fences and walls: ancient stuff, really. The psalmist’s lament in Psalm 62 is so to the point, comparing his anger toward unjust enemies as the forces of nature that finally topple a wall. Ancient, too, in material: our upstate New York hills seem at times to be all stones! Over the past several centuries, farmers here have “cultivated” as many fieldstones as crops.

In the past, those stones became fences to keep dairy cows in the fields. The wall pictured here is just a few miles down our road. Although it borders property that is no longer a farm, these are the stones laid up decades ago on this spot as the fields were tilled. The wall has been painstakingly rebuilt exactly as it originally stood. Too often though, these walls are being disassembled, palleted and trucked to suburbia where the field stone walls are recreated in an attempt to capture some of the nostalgic essence of the countryside.

Around here, fences are still fences. Working dairy farms have declined, but they still dot the landscape. And with few exceptions, walls are stone and fences are wooden or barbed wire–for good reason! The faux picket fences of plastic haven’t invaded the landscape–yet. In fact, I can still hop on my road bike like I did today, tuck a camera in the pocket of my riding jersey and capture images along country roads that are not unlike those that might have been encountered a century ago.

The field stone wall for our garden will help us to level the ground, create a natural space for Linda’s perennials to grow, and tie our small piece of rural America into the bucolic countryside. We still have a lot of work to do to finish the project. In the meantime, though, those field stones have worked their way into our psyche.