Lessons Learned While Building Fence

I spent a couple days last week in northern Wyoming helping my brothers repair the barbed wire fence that surrounds a large chunk of rangeland my family owns. Here’s what I have learned from that experience.

1. It is WAY easier to sit at home and make up pretend conversations than it is to walk a rugged, hilly fence line and hoist a 40-pound homemade fence post pounder and hack overgrown sagebrush away from sagging fence wire.

2. I whinged mightily about having to take part in this exercise when I first heard about it. Why in the world should I have to participate? Did I not have three brothers who were perfectly capable of taking care of the fence on their own? After all, Dad taught them how to fence, not me. By the end of our two days of working together, I found myself very grateful for the time I got to share with my brothers. It’s not often that we are able to get together for an extended period of time, away from outside distractions, when we can talk and laugh and reminisce. (I also decided that my crabbiness made me look like a whiny stink-head instead of a team player. Next time I’ll try to be more gracious.)

3. I had forgotten how beautiful Wyoming can be at this time of year. The mountains had a new, pristine white coating of snow on their sharp peaks, the sky was a stunning, clear blue, and the meadowlarks and red-winged blackbirds sang all around us as we worked. It made me realize how accustomed I had become to urban noises instead of the pureness of rural silence. It felt like I had taken a cleansing breath by returning to a quieter, simpler place.

4. As I untangled three strands of very uncooperative barbed wire, I found myself thinking about my novel-in-progress and how I was going to use my new-found fence building/mending skills to write an entirely new chapter for my character. Lesson? Instead of running away from new experiences, it’s better to embrace any chance to learn and grow.

5. At the end of Day 1, a day when I had walked, tugged, hoisted, carried, lifted, hammered, shoveled, and just generally tried to be helpful, my brother stopped me on the way to bed and told me, “Dad would have been proud of how hard you worked today.” My dad was a short, stubborn man of Scottish heritage who worked every day from dawn till dusk and always moved through the world “at a dead run,” according to my mother. He had no hobbies. Work was his hobby. Even though he has been dead for nearly thirty years, I realized that his opinion still matters to us. If Scotty Harrison tells you “ya done good," well, that’s high praise.