Do Fences Make Good Neighbors?
“Barb Wire and Eagle Mesa” Monument Valley, Utah, September 2026
Hello Friend,
When I was out West recently, I remembered how important fences were. The land stretches for miles and miles and miles. And so do the fences. I went through many places where the mountains, valleys and fences ran forever. But very few places where I was able to stop and photograph. While driving from Green River, Utah, and Sedona, AZ, we did go through Monument Valley. Oh, yes, it was impressive. But, because I wasn’t familiar with the place and there was a lot of traffic, I missed one turnout that I think had one of the best views. Instead, I did stop a few miles farther down the road. The clouds, the buttes, the brush and the fences all stood up to proclaim, “This is the West.”
There is something iconic and dangerous about barbed-wire fences. When I would pull over, I would get the main wide shot that showed off the formations of both the land and the clouds. But then I would walk closer to the fence line. Getting down low, the line of wire would then split the ground, the mountains and the sky. Just like trying to frame up these grand landscapes, the fences really can’t contain what is there. Only set an arbitrary boundary. The land, the mountains and the sky on both sides; the roads, the cars and the people slicing through them in an almost insignificant way.
“Trees, and What Were Once Trees as Well” Hopeland Gardens, August 2026
But it wasn’t this drive that got me started thinking about fences and when I have photographed them. A few weeks before, I was at Hopeland Gardens here in Aiken, waiting to teach a private lesson, when I noticed the designs on the wet wood of a fence mirrored the design of the trees next to it. After creating the photo, I realized fences and walls were things I have photographed a fair amount. I thought it might be interesting to look back at some of those images to see if there were any themes of note.
I had parts of the Robert Frost poem “Mending Wall” go through my mind a few times while contemplating this post, and I was thinking I would use just his words as my text. Though, when I reread the full poem, he was, of course, talking more about mending his New England stone wall, and not the fences I’ve been photographing here in the Southeast, or recently out West. Though, there are still some phrases that I think might have a little overlap.
“Old Rock Wall” Keswick, England, May 2019
With Frost writing about fixing the wall with his neighbor as “just another kind of out-door game”, I can’t help but think of the effort to maintain all of these walls and fences. Since most of these have been around for years and decades, when I see them, I think they must have always been there. Even when I see fences down or in a bad state, I almost never see the people who are fixing them. But fix them they must at some point.
But I don’t really think much about fences, since I don’t have one of my own on my property. Though, two of my neighbors have recently replaced their fences. One by choice, and one that was destroyed from the hurricane a couple of years ago. But how important are the fences in our lives? Both the physical and the mental ones. Do we feel freer when we are allowed to roam as far as we see fit? Or do we need boundaries for ourselves and for the ones around us? I see Frost, the narrator of the poem, as the free-roaming sort. And his neighbor as the one who sees the need for fences to know where the boundaries are for everyone. Where do you come down on this? Do ‘Good Fences make good neighbors’? Or do we need to take away some of the boundaries separating us from each other?
Thank you, and keep creating what you do.
Patrick Krohn
“Huddled Behind the Wall” Aiken, SC March 2025
“He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thoughts of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’ ”
“Barely Holding On” Hinckley, Utah, September 2026
“Sentinel Mesa and Rain Storm” Monument Valley, Utah, September 2026
“Gateway to The Land” Hillsborough, NC August, 2026
“Spring Tree & Small Wall” Aiken, SC February 2025
Here are a few excerpts from the poem, and a link to the full piece read by Frost himself.
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun:
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.”
October 2026
“Old Homestead” Aiken, SC December 2024
“I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.”
“Where Once was Field…” Aiken, SC, December 2022
“We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apples trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him,
He only says, ‘Good fences makes good neighbors.’ ”
“Two Fences, Two Seasons” Aiken, SC, November 2024 and March 2022
“ ‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ ”
