New: “Boundaries”

My house is surrounded by stone walls, the result of the house being built right in the middle of an old, overgrown sheep meadow, once belonging to my (many times painted) neighbor’s farm. I read recently that property ownership, many years ago, was defined not by surveyors, but by the land you cleared of trees and stone. If you cleared 10 acres, and stacked the stones you cleared to form an enclosed tract…those 10 acres were yours. These walls became the division lines between one man’s property and his neighbor. Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” gets you thinking about the intent of these walls. In his poem he writes, “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out…” Kind of makes you think he wasn’t a fan. But sometimes boundaries are good to have, as long as they’re mutually respected. “Boundaries” 36 x 36