June 16, 2013. Good Fences Make Good Neighbors.

June 16, 2013.  Good Fences Make Good Neighbors.  Today's title is from another Robert Frost poem.  Frost wrote Mending Wall in 1914, nearly 100 years ago.  Another line from the poem is, "Before I built a wall I'd ask to know what I was walling in or walling out."  Those lines came rushing back to me as I looked again at the stone fences lining Cottage Row in Fish Creek in the top two photos above.  We returned to the road today as part of our two-hour bike ride.  I wondered when the fence was built and by whom.  And, I wondered what the builder was walling in or walling out. 

Our time here is winding down.  We have two more days before starting south for home.  The drive home is a leisurely two-day drive or an long one-day drive.  A "barn-sour horse" is one who knows when he is returning to the barn and gains speed on the way.  There is something about the comfort of a barn and fresh oats that a horse remembers.  That pretty well describes us.

I met Albert, a traveler from England, this morning at the camp showers.  He had a very pronounced British accent and an even more pronounced stutter.  He told me that he and his wife have been spending six months in the United States since 2008.  I asked what he did in his work life.  He said he was a "big truck" mechanic, just an everyday working stiff.  He read the puzzlement on my face and volunteered that he took his life savings out of the stock market in January 2008, before the recession began.  He bought US dollars with it at a time when you could get two dollars for a British pound.  Now, he says, you would get less than $1.25 for a pound. 

He said they came here expecting to stay six months and that would be that.  But, they fell in love with the former English colony and have returned each year for another six months.  He and his wife travel in a fifth wheel, which they store here when they return to England.  They have traveled to 48 states, missing only Iowa and Minnesota.  They are leaving for Minneapolis today and will visit Iowa while they are close. 

He said that people tell him that he is lucky to have taken his money when he did.  He says it wasn't luck, that he foresaw the financial collapse by watching the world markets very carefully.  He said it was wisdom, not luck.  I told him he was lucky to be so wise.  I wished him well and invited him to come back in six months.  He said he planned to do just that. 

His is a feel-good story when so many are still recovering from the recession.  Many lost half their savings and are facing the prospect of working into their seventies to make up what they lost.  It is nice to know that some weathered the storm very well.  It provides hope for the rest of us, that we might be one of the wise ones next time.