On the Path to Being a Good Neighbor

Chris and I bought our first place when we were in our late twenties. We had a young baby, two horses, a number of cats, and lots of energy. Our place included an old farmhouse, an even older-looking barn, a cellar, an outhouse, a dirt-floored garage, and twenty acres. It was perfect to us, and with youthful enthusiasm we set about to build a new corral and put up new pasture fence for the horses. At the back of our property lived an old man—he was a small little man made more so when his wife spoke to him with a big, disapproving voice. At one time, he had some cattle back in a pasture behind us, so there was an old woven wire fence that ran along the back border. Therein lay our dilemma. When the property was surveyed before we bought it, the survey pole marking our land was four or five feet on the neighbor’s side of the old fence. Where should we set the sturdy corner post for our new fence? I remember we asked the realtor what we should do, and she advised us to put the post on the surveyed corner of our property. So we dug our deep hole with a post-hole digger, careful to keep the whole post on our corner of the property. We tamped in the dirt and congratulated ourselves on how sturdy it was! We set the brace post and called it a day. Not long afterwards we noticed the neighbor had cut the top off our big, sturdy post! And we got a very official letter in the mail from a lawyer for our neighbor saying we were trespassing on his property, and there would be dire consequences if we did not remove the post and stay off his land! I was upset and confused by this turn of events—we were conscientiously trying to do the right thing, and we had already made an enemy of our new neighbor.

A couple weeks and a number of snows ago, I strapped on snowshoes for a walk in the delicious sun and cold. It was one of those boldly invigorating days. The snow was light and fluffy, and I sank a number of inches with each step I took.

But I was not the first one out in the new snow! Some little creature, perhaps a mouse, made his way from the wild plum tree to nowhere! He either went under the snow, made his way back on his exact same tracks, or was plucked from the snow from above.

The tracks under the bird feeders left evidence of a busy night.

Where do rabbits live in Winter? In a palatial snow-covered brush pile!

There are plenty of brush-pile igloos for everyone.

The downside of having housing for rabbits is their restaurant choice! They know how to make enemies with the man of the house.

By far the most abundant tracks were from the deer. They foraged through the woods, pawed at the snow, nibbled at branches, and bedded down under cedar trees—their every move etched in the snow.

My snowshoeing destination was the granite rock overlook that was a rest stop decades ago as part of the highway system. It overlooks the Sauk River as it runs into the Chain of Lakes. Only the deer and I were spectators at this time of year.

On my way back, my snowshoe prints blended in with the deer prints—I was the one traveling on their territory.

Back in the yard, shadows from allium flower stalks darkened the snow.

Feather prints in the snow allude to the capture of another little rodent. Snow tracks show the movement and activity of the creatures that roam around our yard and the woods.

As young, naive kids on the first place we owned, we thought we were doing the right thing. As the old established neighbor, he felt we were trespassing on his land. As it turned out, we backed down and built our fence on our side of his fence—not on the survey line. The posts we put in remained in his unused pasture, a symbol to us both of the questions of what it means to be a good neighbor and what constitutes land ownership. We also got schooled by him about being a good neighbor when our hay field had a hearty bunch of Canadian thistles growing in it. Thistle seeds care nothing for fence lines. (To be fair to us, we had left them at the request of the county after they had released beneficial insects to combat thistles.) As I snowshoed to the overlook, I trespassed on an abandoned lot and on an easement deeded to another before getting to public land. The cross-country runners and a bevy of high-schoolers do the same when the weather is nice. The deer path has been used by others for decades before we moved here. Deer, rabbits, and other wildlife come and go as they please—they care nothing for property lines either. And though Chris curses the critters who destroy his young trees, we know that we live with them as neighbors. Who is encroaching upon who? It’s a good thing when we can stand tall in our integrity and look carefully at our shadows, those buried hurts and disappointments that we disown in ourselves and often project onto others. With sweeping certainty, we judge them unfit. Too often others pay for our wounds. On this journey of life, we learn what we didn’t know before—about ourselves, others, and the world. We can hope our transgressions are forgiven, we can pray to forgive those who trespass against us, and we can learn to be good neighbors.