Don’t Fence Me In

By guest author Vol Lindsey 02/17/2020 On the edge of town, here on my stretch of Rt. 66, the world is big and empty. It rolls south across the Llano Estacado toward the Palo Duro, a complication of landscape where the Red River meanders in all it’s various incarnations. The North Fork, The Salt fork, The East Fork, The Prairie Dog Town Fork. From where I am standing, the thirty years of insignificant rain has reduced the palette to various shades of amber, brown and slate green. The sky is empty and the tricky plains with all its hidden washes and ravines harbor the coyote, deer and antelope you know are there without a trace. Even the cattle seem to give your eye the slip, scattered as they are over the meager slips of grass. Some rancher, though has laid hands on the wild world and, divided it all with a perfect line of Devil’s Rope strung tight on metal posts and disappearing in the hazy distance because, somehow, we have never learned to leave well enough alone.