"Something There Is That Doesn't Love a Wall"

Throughout the Hudson Valley there are remnants of old stone walls that once marked boundaries of fields and property lines.  The stones so carefully placed resting one on the other winding over hills and across valleys.

Summers spent in Robert Frost country in New Hampshire gave me an appreciation of the importance of knowing the boundaries of your property. In a neighborhood on a lake where many houses had the second generation in the same family living there, property line issues had a way of becoming cemented in local lore.   Robert Frost wrote in his poem, "Mending Wall" of the annual ritual of walking the wall with a neighbor to mend and maintain it.

As a homeowner, it is truly important to learn the property lines that surround your yard.  Issues arise over time and it is much more pleasant to truly know the boundaries and understand your maintenance obligations vis a vis your neighbors.  We have all heard stories of neighborly squabbles that could have been avoided if first, there was knowledge of the property lines.

If it is not easy to tell the boundaries from your survey, it is a good investment to hire a local surveyor to mark the property line with a rebar marker that has permanence vs. a flag/stake.  In our area, we use Campbell Engineering, Chappaqua, New York.  This information helps if you need to have a conversation with your neighbor regarding encroachments or dumping by cavalier yard workers.

There is wisdom in the old New England saying, "Good fences make good neighbors."  Where each knows the boundaries, there is understanding and acceptance.  Where each works to maintain his part there is harmony.

Mending Wall by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Images by Slice of Exurbia