View from the North 40: It takes a powerful eye to not see what isn't there

Sometime a brain makes more out of something than is really there. Or maybe it’s just me.

We had a little dog yard-slash-pen thing we built out of 5-foot tall welded wire fencing across the 14-foot gap between our little shop and our house. Our yard proper, the people yard if you will, is bigger than this pen, though.

We have a simple one-strand electric fence that runs around both of the buildings and the beautiful, large, old cottonwood tree that provides a canopy over the west end of it all. The electric fence was strictly to keep equine intruders away from our buildings and vehicles, but it creates a cozy, cute yard area.

Nothing fancy. I just mow the pasture grass that grows there, letting it go dry in summer, and over the years a riot of native shrubs has grown up – usually in inappropriate places – chokecherry, currant, wild roses, gooseberry and this tough, low-growing one I can never remember the name of.

The dog yard is between the front door and the people yard, but we didn’t want to build an “elaborate” and “expensive” fence with the welded wire and braced corners around a “big” yard.

We were only going to live here a couple more years — at most — and our dog wouldn’t be using the pen much anyway.

One of those statements is true.

In the almost 30 years of that pen’s life it was used maybe two dozen times — as much for stray and visiting dogs as our own dogs, which, it turns out, live a pretty good life hanging out with us, or home alone for such a short time they could remain inside in the comfort of a climate-controlled house.

But the dog yard remained, with its two fence lines between the front door and the people yard in the back, just in case. And mother nature continued to make the backyard cozier and cozier. We put a few lawn chairs out there and over the almost 30 years of that yard’s life we have used it maybe two dozen times.

I’ve used the dog’s fence more as an emergency clothes line-slash-drying rack than we’ve used that yard.

There’s something about the dog pen being between the front door and the yard under the tree, forcing us to walk out around the shop to get to the backyard that just makes it feel like not part of our living space.

My friend Carolyn is interested in the topic of edges and lines. No, she’s not some random weirdo. It’s worse. She’s an artist, a serious one. That means she’s researched this topic, has formulated a theoretical-meets-practical application philosophy about it and composed written works on the topic – among many others. And, yeah, I’ve friended out of my intellectual comfort zone, but she apparently has low standards so it works for us.

Moving on with edges thing and how it applies to my two separate yards: Carolyn wrote on her website, https://www.carolynanderson.com, in 2014 which says in part that lines make our eyes and brains see things as separate entities and not part of a whole that is connected. This happens partly because our brains are wired to compartmentalize like that.

It seems like a small thing to walk from the front door, around the little shop to the people yard in back, but I tell you, over the years we have been disinclined to do this. I blame those lines, those two fence lines of the dog pen because it’s not a long walk to get there. Yes, we can see right through the wire fences, but we didn’t feel through them.

Carolyn proposes that the artistic solution is to look at changes in color and shape and between light and dark areas, not think of the scene or subject as having lines at all but as being a whole composed of those three elements.

A few years ago a post in the fence closest to the front door rotted off. We didn’t need the dog pen so I just removed that fence line. The other fence line remained up, largely because it was ingrown with limbs and the shrubs leaned on the fence for support, but a bit because removing it was pretty low on my to-do list, and just a touch because we still had our Cooper dog.

With fire danger high this year, I decided to take the wire out because leaves and blowing plants tend to tangle in it, settle in place and become a fire a hazard. Besides, we don’t have a dog any more to need a fence.

Every time I walk into or out of my front door, my eye is drawn to a fence line that no longer exists, There is a new absence and an openness, but still I see the line. So I raked the old fence line clean of debris, but I see the shrubs in a line, still, their branches growing along wires that aren’t there.

Carolyn wrote that one should “not assume there is an edge.”

Like me, the cat still walks around the shop to get from the former backyard to the front door, so I know I’m not bonkers – he sees the fence line too.

I think maybe I’ll trim back the chokecherries and that currant bush a bit this weekend, maybe drive the mower right through there.

A brain is a difficult thing to retrain, but maybe with a hedge trimmer and a mower blade I can erase the line that isn’t there.

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Maybe I have special powers to see things that aren’t there. I see dead fences at http://facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40 .