Fence

From our walk there was this. 

A remnant fence line. 

Likely constructed a lifetime longer ago than my own it served to keep livestock in and not people out.  A whitetail can clear this fence in a single bound. 

I wouldn’t ordinarily wax poetic about old fence lines except that the Blonde Dog is both oblivious yet not impervious to barbed wire. There was shouting involved.  But I digress.  

In any event this old fence is slowly returning to the earth as are the dead and dying ash and elm trees that have grown-up in its slim shadow.   

Hardly anybody pastures their cattle any longer – at least in my immediate neighborhood.  And many fence lines have disappeared as farm fields have grown larger and more efficient.  And, of course, pheasant populations have shrunk as their fence line habitat has.  

The pasture this fence delineated several lifetimes ago has returned to the earth in a manner of speaking.  No longer tamed by cattle and plow it is reverting to a wild state of trees and other vegetation now home to those creatures that make early succession forests their home. 

The wooden posts of this fence were hewn from trees likely born more than 200 years ago. The wire manufactured almost 100 years ago – give or take.  My guess is that this barrier will likely persist for a length of time after I have returned to the earth.  So what’s another 50 or more years - give or take.  Other species of trees will succeed the ash and elm.  And there is a high probability that some future person will shout at their Labrador retriever to not charge through the barbed wire. 

This is an old fence for sure.  In human terms.  To nature it is a blink of an eye.  If a fence could tell tales what might it give witness to in that blink?