Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/535416
8 JULY 1-7, 2015 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM Once upon a time, Robert Frost wrote a poem called "The Mending Wall." He wrote about walking his property line with his neighbor each year to replace the stones that had fallen from the fence that marked the boundaries of their land. I thought about ol' Robert on a trip to Walnut Knob where my wife's family has a cabin off the Blue Ridge Parkway. I am like Prince Phillip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth. I have no more ownership in the mountain cabin than Prince Phillip has in Windsor Castle but like Phil, I get to visit there and don't have to pay rent. It's a pretty sweet arrangement for us both. Walnut Knob is the name of the mountain my father-in-law Barney Davidson bought back in the early '70s. The cabin has a golden pond in front of it, filled with sparkling spring water and fish that are completely safe from me as I do not fish. The front porch of the cabin looks out over the pond. The pasture on the other side of the pond is periodically filled with cows and an occasional loud white mule. The porch is equally well-suited to thinking profound thoughts about the meaning of life or taking a nap listening drowsily to the birds and the bees. Watching the ripples on the pond will induce a state of Zen that affects both man and dog. We took our new puppy, the Warrior Princess Molly Scarlett, up to Walnut Knob for the first time recently. She is totally fearless. Molly Scarlett is the successor to our previous dog, Nico, our toothless 17-year-old miniature dachshund who was afraid of everything. Molly recently discovered that she knows how to bark. She tried out her outside voice on the cows across the pond. The cows were duly unimpressed but Molly was quite proud of herself. Mountain weather is highly changeable. Molly watched the cows remain contented standing wrapped in their leather raincoats oblivious to a sudden hard rain. A thick fog came up in about two minutes wrapping the cows in the mists. It wasn't gorillas in the mist, but it came pretty close. When it rains, the bullfrogs start to sing even in the middle of the day. The pond dances with the wind and the heavy raindrops. Molly found out that she knows how to swim on this trip when she wandered into the pond. She can dog paddle. She also enjoys sitting on the porch or at the edge of the pond watching the water and thinking profound thoughts about the origin of the universe, prospects for peace in the Middle East and her next meal. When the bucolic Zen gets too intense from sitting on the front porch, we head over to beautiful downtown Floyd, Virginia. Floyd has been undergoing a slow-motion gentrification from a sleepy little town with one restaurant, the Pink Floyd café, to a sleepy little town with about five really good restaurants. Part of the road to Floyd is unpaved and twists by a Christmas tree farm. The Christmas trees come right up to the edge of the road but are held back from returning to nature by a fence. The fence is there to keep the Christmas trees from crossing the road. The Christmas trees want to answer the call of the wild to return to the forest looming on the other side. In "The Mending Wall," Frost noted that "something there is that doesn't love a wall." The Christmas trees don't love the wall that separates them from their brother trees living free in the wilderness across the road. They strive to roam free, to stand randomly among their fauna family instead of being lined up in unnaturally straight regimented rows. Unfortunately, the fence holds them back. We all live behind fences. Some fences are much higher than others, but we all have them. The horror in Charleston that spewed out of a gun handled by a racist nut job with a grudge came about because he lived behind a fence that allowed him to see black people as "others" that he had to destroy. Only his white side of the fence mattered to him. The 10,000 people who tore down their fences in Charleston by joining the unity march across the Ravenel Bridge after the murders showed that racial bigotry is a life-style for losers. Turns out that Mr. Frost's line that "good fences make good neighbors" ain't necessarily so. Don't Fence Me In by PITT DICKEY PITT DICKEY, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@upandcomin- gweekly.com. 910.484.6200. Molly, the Warrior Princess, thinks deep thoughts at the pond on Walnut Knob. 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