The Wrong Side of the Fence

If you’ve ever explored the backroads of the West, you’ve likely been confounded by a barbed-wire gate. It’s mostly just an extension of the fence itself, with the same menacing wire teeth, but instead of hinges hard-tethering it to the fence on one side, there is a loop of barbed wire, as if the fence maker couldn’t be bothered to buy two different kinds. If you’re short or less strong than a bodybuilder, opening and closing these gates without laying open some skin is near impossible. But leaving a closed gate open is far worse than a little blood. 

“You wouldn’t leave someone’s front door open when you come into their house,” my dad used to say. Seeing a neighbor kid on the school bus, tears and snot coursing down his face, drove that lesson home. He’d left a gate open, and his horse escaped to the highway and a terrible fate. After that, I’d face the sneering gates with a queasy stomach. I’d wriggle off my horse and size up my chances for success. I knew that once I opened it, I wouldn’t have the option to leave it open, no matter what.

Fences make for good metaphors but those damned barbed-wire gates gave me firsthand experience with anxiety. I could always jimmy a gate open, but I never really knew if I’d have the muscle to get it closed until I’d opened it. It was sink or swim, with no chance to test the waters.

Through sheer determination, I did manage to close a lot of those gates, heart thumping, scratches on my arms, wrists, and face. I noticed that with each passing year I got stronger, and things got easier. But I also remember a time – I never told a single soul except my brother – when I just couldn’t get an unforgiving gate shut. I rode hell bent for leather to where he was working – maybe 20 minutes away but long enough for plenty of bad luck to occur – and dragged him back with me to close that gate.

No amount of grit I had was going to overcome physics. I just plainly needed his help that day.

I thought about this on my recent drive home from the Governor’s Mental Health Summit, under gorgeous open skies, antelope keeping me company for mile after mile, my windshield framing a festival of clouds. There is so much beauty in Wyoming.

This landscape also contains challenges, pain, and struggles to outpace bad odds. John Wayne looms large in our narrative here, but the truth is – as I learned at the Summit – many of our kids tally high “ACEs” scores, or adverse childhood experiences. Kids affected by violence or substance abuse, for example, should never be left alone with even a metaphorical barbed-wire gate. What felt like a rite of passage and a sign of growing independence for me becomes our shared failing as a community if we don’t give these kids the support and help they need. We can’t expect them to “buck up,” persevere, or muscle through pain that belongs to someone else. 

I liked the idea of being a rugged individual earlier in my life, of doing things my way. It’s taken me a long time to realize I never do things on my own, that everything from the food on my table to the phone in my hand connects me to other people. Maybe it’s time we write a new chapter in Wyoming, one in which we tip our hats to our iconic cowboy as we simultaneously recognize our reliance on each other and appreciate the help that is almost always there when we need it. We just have to make it OK to ask, to meet the actual kids or the kid inside every grown up, with compassion, or at least something like curiosity.

I’m reminded, too, that while ranch gates we find shut must be closed again, it’s also true that a gate we find open should be left that way. There’s a reason; someone opened it on purpose, to let creatures through to fresh pasture, say, or to give them access to a source of water.

The gates of the mind are like that: always better left open.