Squall Line

All night gentle waves of rain. Whenever there was a thunder storm warning on the radio I'd shut down, but nothing ever came of it. I kept the radio on, low volume (I did go over and turn it up to listen to some Clapton), because when the weather service breaks in there's a claxon sound, like a submarine diving, and they repeat everything, which is quite handy for half-asleep dimwits. It's a fine little radio piece, always, because they name the small towns that are threatened, you know exactly where that thunder cell is, and where it's heading. In tornado country, they take these thunder cells seriously. I had my emergency kit out, oil lamp, a candle for the island, my headlamp. Spent the entire night thinking about fences. Thoreau was talking about some fences around Concord that were made from inverted stumps. I'd never heard of this before, but it makes a kind of Yankee sense, like dry-stack stone walls. I have an inverted stump in my house right now, so I'm current on this. I imagine the entire process, building an inverted stump fence. Clearing a field, grubbing out the stumps, hauling them by horse, standing them upright (upside down), cutting and intertwining the roots. I love this, because it rots and disappears, maybe it lasts for ten or fifteen years, then it's gone, food for worms, where a barbed wire fence, with Osage orange posts, could last a hundred years. A stone wall might last a few thousand. Fences and walls divide space, and I get into an elaborate argument about whether or not that signifies anything. Paddocks and pasture. Defining space. Meaning is flaking a point, killing a young turkey, finding a clear cold spring. All the rest of it, appearance, is illusion.