If you're familiar with the work of Robert Frost, possibly you've come across this poem of his from his 1943 collection published as "Witness Tree".
BEECH
Where my imaginary line
Bends square in woods, an iron spine
And pile of real rocks have been founded.
And off this corner in the wild,
Where these are driven in and piled,
One tree, by being deeply wounded,
Has been impressed as Witness Tree
And made commit to memory
My proof of being not unbounded.
Thus truth??s established and borne out,
Though circumstanced with dark and doubt??
Though by a world of doubt surrounded.
THE MOODIE FORESTER
I've added a couple of photos from a recent project in Central Texas as illustrations:
That particular Cedar (Ashe juniper) was marked in 1951 to reference a Rock Mound built in 1914 beside which a fence post was set sometime in the interim.
The prong of the Cedar with the cut mark was measured as 8 inches in 1951 and is now 9 inches. The other prongs that weren't stunted by the surveyor's axe have grown about 4 to 5 inches in diameter between 1951 and 2017 and in 1951 were also reported as 8 inches in diameter. That means this tree most likely has been growing in this spot since a time before the Euro-Texans arrived.
If I was going to build a wall, I'd ask to know what I'm walling in or walling out.
Dave Karoly, post: 433173, member: 94 wrote: If I was going to build a wall, I'd ask to know what I'm walling in or walling out.
He only says, ??Good fences make good neighbors.'
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn??t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
In the case of "Beech" the tree isn't a bad metaphor for the role of the surveyor as permanent bystander and bearer of the truth, instead of momentary accomplice.
Kent McMillan, post: 433176, member: 3 wrote: In the case of "Beech" the tree isn't a bad metaphor for the role of the surveyor as permanent bystander and bearer of the truth, instead of momentary accomplice.
Well said.
