Musing

Open prairie space is daunting in the same way a blank page is unsettling to the painter or the writer. Place a single word on the page or draw one line of perspective and everything shifts. A decision made, there is now a path forward, even if the path is seemingly without end.

One of my first projects earlier this spring was taking down page wire fence on a quarter section of land. Whether putting fencing up or taking it down, fencing on large parcels of land is a monolith of a job. It is one of those activities I have to make myself go and do. The sight of land stretching on, at any other time, with any other job, is a source of awe and gratitude for me. On open space the eye and the spirit roam just as the prairie entices them to. But mark open land with a fence line and my mind travels that fence line into the very void of endless. Highways on the prairie do the same thing to travelers, unnerving them with a sameness that lacks interruption. The appeal of curvy roads is that they do not draw attention to the endlessness, even though it is still there.

Taking this fence down required walking along and pulling the bottom out from the tangle of years of grass and molehills, and then laying the wire down to be rolled up. One trip walking along and lifting wire mesh from dead grass, second trip walking along rolling it up on the ground. Giving myself the goal of doing three rolls of wire each day out seemed the only way to approach this job without wearing out my body and my willingness, so for several days that’s what I did. And just like making the mark on the page, or putting the first few words of gibberish down, the feeling of satisfaction after the first rolls of fence were rolled up motivated me to make progress the next day and so on.

After a few days I reached a corner of the pasture, which happened to be my end point for that day. I happened to look backward before leaving the pasture and took in the lack of a wire barrier between the fence posts. My heart expanded with a sense of unbridled freedom. My body’s recognition of unbuttoned breathing room I’m forever longing for; the breathing room all of us seem to be looking for. The only thing that has been removed is the wire and yet the lack of it shaped a visceral appeal within me. The appeal of a prairie’s freedom visually portrayed by what was now missing. I grew even more determined to reach the end of my endless task, just as I do when those first handful of marks on the blank page first show potential.