Fences keep others out, but keep us in, too

We should exercise caution about our impulse to cordon off

Across rural America, many farmers and rural landowners like me are ripping out the old barbed wire fences that section off our fields. In many cases, we’re tearing down the very barriers our ancestors put up to stop cattle from roaming the open range.

Why take down a fence? Because, as farmers and ranchers understand better than most, economies are fluid: much of the barbed wire that once served to keep out livestock grows obsolete in an era when cash crops, not cattle, rule. Fences may feel permanent, but economies and cultures exist in perpetual flux. And in a volatile global economy ruled by volatile leaders, the fences we erect today to protect our assets are sometimes those that limit our potential tomorrow.

I grew up on a seventhgeneration farm where Robert Frost’s line “good fences make good neighbors” enjoyed the weight of papal decree. And yet, even for don’t-fence-me-in types like me, Trump’s $1.6 million budget for a “brick-andmortar wall” along America’s southern border demands a common-sense reply.

In over 20 years of fence-building from Iowa to New Mexico, I’ve learned that fences come with a built-in paradox. While they make it difficult to get in, they make it proportionally difficult to get out. On Western ranches, I’ve put up hundreds of feet of fence in ruggedly beautiful country. And with each post sunk, I’ve experienced a sinking feeling at the logic of willingly sacrificing the long view for the myopic and often mythic protections of a wall.

Consider, too, this inconvenient truth: fences require perpetual maintenance. Like the fraught decision to apply a first coat of paint to a home, the building of a fence commits the fencer, or in this case the fencing nation, to years of upkeep. Shouldn’t risk-adverse, don’t-tread-on-me types like me — those of us predisposed to the fencer’s mentality in the first place — be naturally wary of the no-horizon clause and no easy “out” commitment of a national wall? Even the urbanite putting up storebought fence panel from a big box store knows the frustration at having to “go around” where once they exited freely at their own convenience. It’s a straight-up paradox: in fencing others out, we often unwittingly box ourselves in.

Don’t get me wrong, years of fence-building and mending have shown me that walls do serve a purpose, though they are far from the cureall our current fencer-in-chief would have us believe. Used strategically and with care, they sometimes solve persistent problems between neighbors locked in territorial disputes or culture wars.

In the end, however, we should be cautious where our impulse to cordon off is concerned. We should weigh carefully our own motives, the alleged benefits and, most urgently, the literal and figurative cost of building walls the angels of our better natures might soon tear down.