Mending Fences

This morning, I offer you a photo essay to celebrate the progress that Glen and Tony are making mending fences. It’s both a contemplative revisit of my prior post, “Fences & Neighbors” that leans on Robert Frost’s poem, “Mending Wall”, and a visual follow-up to another recent rumination on caretaking and stewardship.

As we embark on yet another new rehab project — small in the grander scheme of our 18+ year historic rehabilitation of Rosslyn but an intriguing nexus of problem solving woven into one simple architectural detail — I’m struck by a notion… that through-threads our relationship with Rosslyn. That our relationship with Rosslyn across an almost two decade sojourn has actually been a symbiotic stewardship. That Susan, Rosslyn, and I have each and all been our caretaker’s caretaker. (Source: Caretaker’s Caretaker)

Although there are usually multiple concurrent projects underway, I was referring to repairs and maintenance on Rosslyn’s front fence that runs parallel to Lake Shore Road (aka NYS Art. 22).

Much like the fieldstone wall that Robert Frost describes, wood fencing and weather wrestle quietly but persistently for the upper hand. Ongoing maintenance like refereeing offers an occasional advantage to the fence, but nature is never defeated for long.

While there is much to recommend the handsome hem we wove into Rosslyn’s tapestry sixteen years or so ago, both the contest and the contemplation it provoked are ongoing.

Clear boundaries minimize disagreements. Clear boundaries underpin understanding and consensus. Borders, margins, limits yield the unknown known. Corralling and framing and stockading simplify and clarify. Yes. Usually. But at what cost? Who is hurt? Who is offended? What discourse and interaction is hemmed out? (Source: Fences & Neighbors)

I’ll trust today’s photographs to document the challenges and rewards of Tony and Glen’s endeavor — mending fences is delicate physics! — and I’ll leave you to consider the merits of erecting barriers, aesthetically meritorious or otherwise, as a sort of Sisyphean tradition.