Home territory

This is the time of year for cold and snow and wolves mating. We've got the cold. We're getting the snow. If their territory keeps expanding, we may soon have mating wolves. They're already in the general vicinity North and West of our county. That definitely gives us something positive to look forward to. The local coyote packs seem to be ineffective at keeping the local deer herd nervous enough to stay away from our low-hanging bird feeder and our landscape shrubbery.

members of the International Wolf Center pack

Photo by J. Harrington

We admit that, when we lived there, Massachusetts was not noted for its wolf population nor as a center of copper mining. The paper linked at the end of this sentence provides an overview of the current status of wolves in New England. [No resident populations.] Frank Woolner, in one of his stories published in My New England, describes a late Winter encounter between a whitetail deer and three --- dogs, not wolves!

There are many other points of comparison between our two home territories. For better, or worse, both New England and Minnesota fields yield bounteous root crops of stones. We know that, in New England, each Spring's harvest of stones are crafted into walls. We've noticed few stone walls anywhere in rural Minnesota but we do seem to recall reading Bill Holm, or Paul Gruchow, or both, expounding on stone piles growing in Minnesota's prairie regions. Come to think on it, Massachusetts, at least the Eastern end I'm most familiar with, was short on prairies too.

a stone wall in St. Paul that needs some mending

Photo by J. Harrington

In case you're wondering, we're not actually trying to compare Minnesota and Massachusetts/New England. We are pondering why it seems to be that, despite having lived in Minnesota for more than half of our life, we still think of New England as "home." Perhaps the best explanation is no explanation at all, but a statement of premise. Woolner, in the Foreword to My New England, succinctly notes:

Know this, and know it very certainly: a man or a woman born in New England will never be completely happy anywhere else on earth. In his dreams, if not in reality, this is "the place to return to, to be buried in."

Fortunately, it's a bit premature for us to fully concur with Woolner's premise, but we must admit his track record on the subject is awfully good so far. Maybe that's why we feel a need, from time to time, to see if we can no more understand why we can't be completely happy in Minnesota than we can explain why good fences make good neighbors.

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 neighbour 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 neighbours."

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

"Why do they make good neighbours? 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 neighbours."

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