noise."Story Notes: Fence Post · 1:50am Aug 17th, 2018
Pre-read by metallusionismagic!
You know, y’all would feel that something was off if there wasn’t a blog post, but this time around I haven’t really got a lot to say. I got the idea during a panel at Bronycon about how to make your fics popular. It had Sonata arguing with Wanderer D in Spanish, so that was certainly attention-getting. And GaPJaxie had Glim-Glam hidden in lots of power-point slides, which is important. Also, as always, Bad Horse had researched his portion of the panel into the ground, and he had charts and graphs and suchlike illustrating his point, and since Bad Horse knows how to play me like a gorram fiddle, Mongolian Horse Friction got a second chapter even though everything was resolved in the first: he said people like that.
I’d like to say that one of the panelists suggested this idea, and I’d further like to suggest that said panelist looked right at me when he said that. Maybe called me out by name: “Biscuit, you ought to write this.”
In my heart of hearts, though, I am sure that my mind just wandered and I suddenly got locked on the image of a humble fence post.
Good fences make for good neighbors, that’s what they say.
Y’all know that I love to do my research.
For this story, I did none.
Sure, I had to look at the wiki because I couldn't remember the firewood pony’s name.
But that was it. Everything else just sort of fell into place as I went through Maryland and Pennsylvania, on the way back from Bronycon.
Much like Turnpike, in all honestly.
We’re probably not done with the con-fics yet. There are a few more ideas I got, permission from Jaxie to write something that’s been nagging at my mind for a while (and which a year ago, he might have punched me in the face if I’d suggested [and he still might; if he does, I deserve it (you’ll find out why [and aren’t quadruple embedded parentheses cool])]).
Somebody also left a bunch of notes at Quills and Sofas, things to do in stories: “Fluttershy should swear a lot more.” and story prompts from Twinkletail. One of which gave me an awful idea. Another idea that face-punch worthy, really.
But that’s for the future!
For now, we have this.
Who knows how old a fence is? There’s one alongside my house, one that used to keep the goats where they belonged. Now there are no goats any more, and the fence is overgrown. The gate doesn’t work any more, and yet . . .
. . . and yet, if needed, it could serve a purpose again.
It’s a modern fence, chain-link, but there are plenty of older fences around. Some of them still serving, some not. Some of them, it’s obvious why they are there; others, it isn’t.
“So is it still her room when it's empty? Does the room, the thing have purpose?”
--Objects in Space, Firefly
I don’t know.
But I think it wants a purpose.
One of my gateposts is currently being enveloped by a fast growing sycamore tree, so much so that the landlord took notice and has out a removeal, stump kill and fence rework notice on it. Its a daughter of the tree that grew in the edge of the other side of the garden since I moved in, and which itself was cut down once its branches started to interfere with the houses too much. Theyve kept a lot of hot sun off my place over the years and a grandaughter hasnt had chance to get going as such yet due to teh change from strimming edges to spraying weedkiller. In various places in the villages and farms and moors around,. walls and fences have been built up to and past existing trees and trees have seeded in the shelter, many fences been stapled to the tree itself, which when its a hawthorn can be several hundred years old to start with, many of them layed every decade forming elongated layered structures, until in the 80s or so farmers just switched to grinding them down to shape with heavy brush cutters. Theres accidents each year when barb wire and staples get ripped free by the blades and shatter tractor cabs etc. Or electric wire polypropylene lifeestock fence pulls free and binds up teh drive shafts if theyre lucky or whips if not etc.
The collapsing drystone walls from the 1800s reservoir builds, and the isolated standing stone gate posts from enclosure walls from the 1600s or so, when the narrow transport wall defined tracks spread accross the Valley, letting Pepys write scathing letters of comlaint about the travel quality of the coach and horses, themselves leaving behid the massive width drover roads over the moor tops from the 1200s or so, allowing food animals to be herded from farm are to town and city. All that in the last 800 years, and yet, in the next valley over, runs Roman Road, time and a half even earlier, maybe with the last remnants of an oak tree that was but an acorn falling by the side of the newly built Watling Street.
And oak trees live but a fraction of the time of the bristlecone pines. which themselves are but a fraction the age of archelogical civilisation.
Just how old can the wooden post survive, soaked in acidic peat water, mineralised over the ages as material drawn up by suffusing water is depositied behind as the moisture is driven off by sun and wind.
Oh dear, I really should try not replying at 3 AM, although I found some intresting information and sites like one about Roman Roads in the UK.
Long may you write stories of lives that were, are and could may be.
Nothing survives the years like an Osage Orange hedge post in Kansas. I think we still have some on the farm that my grandfather planted. That infernal tree is only good for one thing. You can't burn it or it spits like explosive popcorn, the hedgeballs are poisonous, and it has nasty thorns. But chop it down (and keep sharpening your chainsaw) and turn it into posts and it's a godsend.
4921041
Good for woodcraft too, if you don't mind the constant sharpening, but sanded and polished it has a glorious golden-orange color to it. Makes for lovely bowls, pens, just about anything really. Most pictures really don't do it justice, done right it'll have a fascinating iridescent sheen to it.
I should've left some ideas scattered about Quills & Sofas. Something to bear in mind for next time; goodness knows I had plenty of them in my notebook.
As for fences, my parents have a literal white picket fence along their front yard that's older than I am. It's gotten mossy at times, but darn if the thing hasn't weathered the decades like a champ. Unlike the fence their neighbors put up that basically went decrepit within a year. Some things are just built old.
God dammit, Admiral.
4921225
I wood.
Is that a random wood post or is it from a place we know?
4922224
It’s random. An image off Google.
4921024
I haven’t lived here at my current house long enough to have multiple generations of trees (not of any size, anyhow), but I do have a spindly maple that’s certainly the offspring of the big red maple in front of my house. I think this fall I’ll try to replant it; it’s too close to the house as it is.
I’ve also got a baby Yew growing alongside the big one . . . that also needs to be moved, and I’ve got the perfect place for it.
That’s the fascinating thing about lots of old structures; so many of them keep getting used, again and again. As long as they can keep up the purpose that they were built for, or as long as someone wants to keep maintaining them . . . I was watching a video a while back about that giant chalk horse over in England, and apparently it’s been somewhat continually maintained by someone over the last 3,000 years. The people who originally built it, then the Romans, then the British (and probably a few others here and there), adding chalk to the original design.
Even somewhere with a relative short history (like Michigan), it’s still interesting to think about how generations past built the roads and laid out where the power lines would go and so forth, and some of those routings have stayed the same over the years, even as everything else has changed.
4921041
I’ve heard that that’s one of the toughest woods that there is (along with the appropriately-named ironwood).
4921113
4921196
Maybe next year, I’ll think to make a bunch of little cards with ideas on them or something and just scatter them about.
A lot of it really does depend on the quality of the materials (and maintenance, too, of course). I’ve got a few sections of cheap Lowe’s privacy fence that has been turned into a car corral, and they’re already pretty rotten. Never painted or anything, which surely doesn’t help. Whereas my grandpa’s privacy fence was forty or more years old, and solid as a rock.
Ohhh boy, I'm excited to see which one of my prompts you were inspired by...
4923402
“Ponies find a baby human in a box and have to raise it. Wait, no--who would ever do that?”
Since I know ROBCakeran53 (author of My Little Dashie) quite well, the first thought that came to mind was that they put it in a sack with rocks and drown it in a river
Alondro chuckles, "Ah, so this is what you decided to do with the concept. My version, of course, had me coming through a portal into Equestria and just staring at the fence post analytically for a couple thousand words until AJ happened along and asked me what the buck I was doing. And then, there would come the punchline... which I won't spoil, as I do intend to write that silly thing one day."
4942125
I’d be really interested to see the couple thousand words of staring at the fence post analytically, to be honest.