Day's End - IN PRAISE OF FENCEROWS

Driving north along the Hudson River, I gazed at a pastoral autumn scene: sere fields of faded yellow harvested corn, stubbly and broken amongst the clods of black earth, almost smooth from my vantage point. Spiky brown veins of wild growth marked barriers between plots. Occasionally, the gray bones of a mature oak rose among the brown shrubs to stand over the yellow fields. A sentry, keeping silent watch as white frost crystals slowly melted into invisibility.

- Bret Rutherford

As a boy, I hunted them with my father, these fencerows. After the corn was cut in the fall, we walked them with our shotguns, hoping to startle a pheasant. The fences were indistinguishable within the brushy rows until you tried to cross them. Then rusty wire barbs made their appearance. I imagined the fencerows were linear remnants of what the land had been before agriculture swept clean and homogenized the Illinois prairies. For all I knew, the fencerow flora was introduced when the farms were established.