Fencing And Gate Quotes

There’s a gate?” I ask, confused. “Why do we always climb the fence?” He shoots me a sly grin. “You were in a dress the two times we’ve been here. Where’s the fun in walking through a gate?

Closing the gate on her oldest fears as she had closed the gate of her own fenced yard, she discovered the wings she'd always wished she had.

One day soon, you’ll hear a car pull up to your curb, an engine cut out. You’ll hear footsteps coming up your front walk. Like they did for Edward Wayne Edwards, twenty-nine years after he killed Timothy Hack and Kelly Drew, in Sullivan, Wisconsin. Like they did for Kenneth Lee Hicks, thirty years after he killed Lori Billingsley, in Aloha, Oregon. The doorbell rings. No side gates are left open. You’re long past leaping over a fence. Take one of your hyper, gulping breaths. Clench your teeth. Inch timidly toward the insistent bell. This is how it ends for you. “You’ll be silent forever, and I’ll be gone in the dark,” you threatened a victim once. Open the door. Show us your face. Walk into the light.

I had grown up in a house with a fence around it, and in this fence was a white smooth wooden gate, two holes bored round and low together so the dog could see through. One night, the moon high, late for me home from the school dance, I remember that I stopped, hand on the gate, and spoke so quietly to myself and to the woman that I would love that not even the dog could have heard. I don’t know where you are, but you’re living right now, somewhere on this earth. And one day you and I are going to touch this gate where I’m touching it now. Your hand will touch this very wood, here! Then we’ll walk through and we’ll be full of a future and of a past and we’ll be to each other like no one else has ever been. We can’t meet now, I don’t know why. But some day our questions will be answers and we’ll be caught in something so bright...and every step I take is one step closer on a bridge we must cross to meet.

The gate is perfectly simple," Temeraire said. "There is only a bar across the fence, which one can lift very easily, and then it swings open; Nitidus could do it best, for his forehands are the smallest. Though it is difficult to keep the animals inside the pen, and the first time I learned how to open it, they all ran away," he added. "Maximus and I had to chase after them for hours and hours--it was not funny at all," he said, ruffled, sitting back on his haunches and contemplating Laurence with great indignation.

I clicked the gate shut and slipped down the alley. Through one fence after another, I caught glimpses of people in their dining rooms and living rooms, eating and watching TV dramas. Food smells drifted into the alley through kitchen windows and exhaust fans. One teenaged boy was practicing a fast passage on his electric guitar, with the volume turned down. In a second floor window, a tiny girl was studying at her desk, an earnest expression on her face. A married couple in a heated argument sent their voices out to the alley. A baby was screaming. A telephone rang. Reality spilled out into the alley like water from an overfilled bowl - as sound, as smell, as image, as plea, as response.

To fit in somewhere in the world, even if there were chains and gates and fences to keep us from running.

One morning as I closed the cyclone-fence gate / to begin a slow drift / down to the cookhouse on foot / (because my truck wheels were glued / in deep mud once again), / I walked straight into / the waiting non-arms of a snake, / its tan beaded-bag skin / studded with black diamonds. Up it coiled to speak to me a eye level. / Imagine! that sleek finger / rising out of the land's palm / and coiling faster than a Hindu rope. / The thrill of a bull snake / startled in the morning / when the mesas lie pooled / in a custard of light / kept me bright than ball lightning all day. Praise leapt first to mind / before flight or danger, / praise that knows no half-truth, and pardons all.

Gripped with bitter cold, ice-locked, Petersburg burned in delirium. One knew: out there, invisible behind the curtain of fog, the red and yellow columns, spires, and hoary gates and fences crept on tiptoe, creaking and shuffling. A fevered, impossible, icy sun hung in the fog - to the left, to the right, above, below - a dove over a house on fire. From the delirium-born, misty world, dragon men dived up into the earthly world, belched fog - heard in the misty world as words, but here becoming nothing - round white puffs of smoke. The dragon men dived up and disappeared again into the fog. And trolleys rushed screeching out of the earthly world into the unknown. ("The Dragon")

I find the treatment of royalty distinctly peculiar. The royal family lives in palaces heavily screened from prying eyes by fences, grounds, gates, guards, all designed to ensure the family absolute privacy. And every newspaper in London carried headlines announcing PRINCESS ANNE HAS OVARIAN CYST REMOVED. I mean you're a young girl reared in heavily guarded seclusion and every beer drinker in every pub knows the precise state of your ovaries.

Sometimes, we have bad on the inside and good on the outside. In these instances, we need to be able to open up our boundaries to let the good in and the bad out. In other words, our fences need gates in them.

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it." This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.

What a charming place!” Bess remarked, as they reached a small, white, two-story colonial house surrounded by a white picket fence with a gate. Flowers, especially old-fashioned American varieties, grew in profusion in the front yard.

I'll open no gates for you, my girl! You'll take any fence I take, and we'll clear it neck and neck!

To take the tops off all the houses and mingle our miseries was too simple a solution, I knew. Houses had windows with shades. Yards had gates and fences. There were carefully planned out sidewalks and roads, and these were the paths that, if you chose to go into someone else's reality, you had to be willing to walk. There were no shortcuts.

Within my heart a garden grows, wild with violets and fragrant rose. Bright daffodils line the narrow path, my footsteps silent as I pass. Sweet tulips nod their heads in rest; I kneel in prayer to seek God's best. For round my garden a fence stands firm to guard my heart so I can learn who should enter, and who should wait on the other side of my locked gate. I clasp the key around my neck and wonder if the time is yet. If I unlocked the gate today, would you come in? Or run away?

Though she would have preferred long ago to have died, fled, gotten it all over with, the body--Jesus, how the body!--took its time. It possessed its own wishes and nostalgias. You could not just turn neatly into light and slip out the window. You couldn't go like that. Within one's own departing but stubborn flesh, there was only the long, sentimental, piecemeal farewell. Sir? A towel. Is there a towel? The body, hauling sadness, pursued the soul, hobbled after. The body was like a sweet, dim dog trotting lamely toward the gate as you tried slowly to drive off, out the long driveway. Take me, take me, too, barked the dog. Don't go, don't go, it said, running along the fence, almost keeping pace but not quite, its reflection a shrinking charm in the car mirrors as you trundled past the viburnium, past the pin grove, past the property line, past every last patch of land, straight down the swallowing road, disappearing and disappearing. Until at last it was true: you had disappeared.

It was Cosa Nostra etiquette to pretend we were the classic example of a white-picket-fence family. Even if our homes were surrounded by an iron gate and security instead.

The step through the gates that takes you from painted grounf to bare grass feels heavy. You think, as you walk away from Le Cirque des Reves and into the creeping dawn, that you felt more awake within the confines of the circus. You are no longer quite certain which side of the fence is the dream.

The step through the gates that takes you from painted ground to bare grass feels heavy. You think, as you walk away from Le Cirque des Reves and into the creeping dawn, that you felt more awake within the confines of the circus. You are no longer quite certain which side of the fence is the dream.

There is a tree. At the downhill edge of a long, narrow field in the western foothills of the La Sal Mountains -- southeastern Utah. A particular tree. A juniper. Large for its species -- maybe twenty feet tall and two feet in diameter. For perhaps three hundred years this tree has stood its ground. Flourishing in good seasons, and holding on in bad times. "Beautiful" is not a word that comes to mind when one first sees it. No naturalist would photograph it as exemplary of its kind. Twisted by wind, split and charred by lightning, scarred by brushfires, chewed on by insects, and pecked by birds. Human beings have stripped long strings of bark from its trunk, stapled barbed wire to it in using it as a corner post for a fence line, and nailed signs on it on three sides: NO HUNTING; NO TRESPASSING; PLEASE CLOSE THE GATE. In commandeering this tree as a corner stake for claims of rights and property, miners and ranchers have hacked signs and symbols in its bark, and left Day-Glo orange survey tape tied to its branches. Now it serves as one side of a gate between an alfalfa field and open range. No matter what, in drought, flood heat and cold, it has continued. There is rot and death in it near the ground. But at the greening tips of its upper branches and in its berrylike seed cones, there is yet the outreach of life. I respect this old juniper tree. For its age, yes. And for its steadfastness in taking whatever is thrown at it. That it has been useful in a practical way beyond itself counts for much, as well. Most of all, I admire its capacity for self-healing beyond all accidents and assaults. There is a will in it -- toward continuing to be, come what may.

How do people get to this clandestine Archipelago? Hour by hour planes fly there, ships steer their course there, and trains thunder off to it--but all with nary a mark on them to tell of their destination. And at ticket windows or at travel bureaus for Soviet or foreign tourists the employees would be astounded if you were to ask for a ticket to go there. They know nothing and they've never heard of the Archipelago as a whole or any one of its innumerable islands. Those who go to the Archipelago to administer it get there via the training schools of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Those who go there to be guards are conscripted via the military conscription centers. And those who, like you and me, dear reader, go there to die, must get there solely and compulsorily via arrest. Arrest! Need it be said that it is a breaking point in your life, a bolt of lightning which has scored a direct hit on you? That it is an unassimilable spiritual earthquake not every person can cope with, as a result of which people often slip into insanity? The Universe has as many different centers as there are living beings in it. Each of us is a center of the Universe, and that Universe is shattered when they hiss at you: "You are under arrest." If you are arrested, can anything else remain unshattered by this cataclysm? But the darkened mind is incapable of embracing these dis­placements in our universe, and both the most sophisticated and the veriest simpleton among us, drawing on all life's experience, can gasp out only: "Me? What for?" And this is a question which, though repeated millions and millions of times before, has yet to receive an answer. Arrest is an instantaneous, shattering thrust, expulsion, somer­sault from one state into another. We have been happily borne—or perhaps have unhappily dragged our weary way—down the long and crooked streets of our lives, past all kinds of walls and fences made of rotting wood, rammed earth, brick, concrete, iron railings. We have never given a thought to what lies behind them. We have never tried to pene­trate them with our vision or our understanding. But there is where the Gulag country begins, right next to us, two yards away from us. In addition, we have failed to notice an enormous num­ber of closely fitted, well-disguised doors and gates in these fences. All those gates were prepared for us, every last one! And all of a sudden the fateful gate swings quickly open, and four white male hands, unaccustomed to physical labor but none­theless strong and tenacious, grab us by the leg, arm, collar, cap, ear, and drag us in like a sack, and the gate behind us, the gate to our past life, is slammed shut once and for all. That's all there is to it! You are arrested! And you'll find nothing better to respond with than a lamblike bleat: "Me? What for?" That's what arrest is: it's a blinding flash and a blow which shifts the present instantly into the past and the impossible into omnipotent actuality. That's all. And neither for the first hour nor for the first day will you be able to grasp anything else.

Mitch’s father’s exclusive gated community had an extensive guard gate. In fact, it had two. It also had an electrified fence. And towers with armed guards. All things considered, few gated communities could be more exclusive than the Colorado State Penitentiary.

Then he skipped out, and saw Sid just starting up the outside stairway that led to the back rooms on the second floor. Clods were handy and the air was full of them in a twinkling. They raged around Sid like a hail-storm; and before Aunt Polly could collect her surprised faculties and sally to the rescue, six or seven clods had taken personal effect, and Tom was over the fence and gone. There was a gate, but as a general thing he was too crowded for time to make use of it. His soul was at peace, now that he had settled with Sid for calling attention to his black thread and getting him into trouble.

In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.

Holy Mother is not meant to be a fence: Holy Mother is a Gate.

Ignorance is assuming that a fence is just one long gate.

places. A gate in the fence and a lonely spot. The monument of the Two Hundred Years’ War.

Chesterton wrote this of a “fence or gate erected across a road”: The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.

The Lowe family had always been the undisputed villains of their town’s ancient, bloodstained story, and no one understood that better than the Lowe brothers. The family lived on an isolated estate of centuries-worn stone, swatched in moss and shadowed in weeping trees. On mischief nights, children from Ilvernath sometimes crept up to its towering wrought iron fence, daring their friends to touch the padlock chained around the gate—the one engraved with a scythe. Grins like goblins, the children murmured, because children in Ilvernath loved fairy tales—especially real ones. Pale as plague and silent as spirits. They’ll tear your throat out and drink your soul. All these tales were deserved.

I was the one they would forget on purpose to untie. I spent many afternoons looped to fences and gates and convenient trees, waiting for a benevolent adult to pass and free me; later I became an escape artist of sorts, expert at undoing knots.

Hamish Alexander-Harrington knew his wife as only two humans who had both been adopted by a pair of mated treecats ever could. He'd seen her deal with joy and with sorrow, with happiness and with fury, with fear, and even with despair. Yet in all the years since their very first meeting at Yeltsin's Star, he suddenly realized, he had never actually met the woman the newsies called "the Salamander." It wasn't his fault, a corner of his brain told him, because he'd never been in the right place to meet her. Never at the right time. He'd never had the chance to stand by her side as she took a wounded heavy cruiser on an unflinching deathride into the broadside of the battlecruiser waiting to kill it, sailing to her own death, and her crew's, to protect a planet full of strangers while the rich beauty of Hammerwell's "Salute to Spring" spilled from her ship's com system. He hadn't stood beside her on the dew-soaked grass of the Landing City duelling grounds, with a pistol in her hand and vengeance in her heart as she faced the man who'd bought the murder of her first great love. Just as he hadn't stood on the floor of Steadholders' Hall when she faced a man with thirty times her fencing experience across the razor-edged steel of their swords, with the ghosts of Reverend Julius Hanks, the butchered children of Mueller Steading, and her own murdered steaders at her back. But now, as he looked into the unyielding flint of his wife's beloved, almond eyes, he knew he'd met the Salamander at last. And he recognized her as only another warrior could. Yet he also knew in that moment that for all his own imposing record of victory in battle, he was not and never had been her equal. As a tactician and a strategist, yes. Even as a fleet commander. But not as the very embodiment of devastation. Not as the Salamander. Because for all the compassion and gentleness which were so much a part of her, there was something else inside Honor Alexander-Harrington, as well. Something he himself had never had. She'd told him, once, that her own temper frightened her. That she sometimes thought she could have been a monster under the wrong set of circumstances. And now, as he realized he'd finally met the monster, his heart twisted with sympathy and love, for at last he understood what she'd been trying to tell him. Understood why she'd bound it with the chains of duty, and love, of compassion and honor, of pity, because, in a way, she'd been right. Under the wrong circumstances, she could have been the most terrifying person he had ever met. In fact, at this moment, she was . It was a merciless something, her "monster"—something that went far beyond military talent, or skills, or even courage. Those things, he knew without conceit, he, too, possessed in plenty. But not that deeply personal something at the core of her, as unstoppable as Juggernaut, merciless and colder than space itself, that no sane human being would ever willingly rouse. In that instant her husband knew, with an icy shiver which somehow, perversely, only made him love her even more deeply, that as he gazed into those agate-hard eyes, he looked into the gates of Hell itself. And whatever anyone else might think, he knew now that there was no fire in Hell. There was only the handmaiden of death, and ice, and purpose, and a determination which would not— couldnot—relent or rest. "I'll miss them," she told him again, still with that dreadful softness, "but I won't forget. I'll never forget, and one day— oneday, Hamish—we're going to find the people who did this, you and I. And when we do, the only thing I'll ask of God is that He let them live long enough to know who's killing them.

We have been happily borne—or perhaps have unhappily dragged our weary way—down the long and crooked streets of our lives, past all kinds of walls and fences made of rotting wood, rammed earth, brick, concrete, iron railings. We have never given a thought to what lies behind them. We have never tried to penetrate them with our vision or our understanding. But there is where the Gulag country begins, right next to us, two yards away from us. In addition, we have failed to notice an enormous number of closely fitted, well-disguised doors and gates in these fences. All those gates were prepared for us, every last one! And all of a sudden the fateful gate swings quickly open, and four white male hands, unaccustomed to physical labor but nonetheless strong and tenacious, grab us by the leg, arm, collar, cap, ear, and drag us in like a sack, and the gate behind us, the gate to our past life, is slammed shut once and for all. That's all there is to it! You are arrested!

No side gates are left open. You’re long past leaping over a fence. Take one of your hyper, gulping breaths. Clench your teeth. Inch timidly toward the insistent bell. This is how it ends for you. “You’ll be silent forever, and I’ll be gone in the dark,” you threatened a victim once. Open the door. Show us your face. Walk into the light.

There was an open gate a little way along, and Lyra could have followed him, bit she hung back unwillingly. Pantalaimon looked at her, and then became a badger. She knew what he was doing. Dæmons could move no more than a few yards from their humans, and if she stood by the fence and he remained a bird, he wouldn't get near the bear; so he was going to pull. She felt angry and miserable. His badger claws dug into the earth and he walked forwards. It was such a strange tormenting feeling when your dæmon was pulling at the link between you; part physical pain deep in the chest, part intense sadnessmand love. And she knew it was the same for him. Everyone tested it when they were growing up: seeing how far they could apart, coming back with intense relief. He tugged a little harder. "Don't, Pan!" But he didn't stop. The bear watched motionless. The pain in Lyra's heart grew more and more unbearable, and a sob of longing rose in her throat. "Pan –" then she was through the gate, scrambling over the icy mud towards him, and he turned into a wildcat and sprang up into her arms, and then they were clinging together tightly with little shaky sounds of unhappiness coming from both. "I thought you really would –" "No –" "I couldn't belief how much it hurt–" and then she brushed away the tears angrily and sniffed hard. He nestled in her arms, and she knew she would rather die than let them be parted and face that sadness again; it would send her mad with grief and terror.

The house lies on the outskirts of the desert community, lone and isolated. A strong wind blows over the surrounding land, swirling dust demons across the darkness of the fields. In the black of sky, a million stars tremble around the full moon. In the split rail fence encircling the large yard, the front gate stands open; as the wind moves it, the wood seems to be alive, shivering. He

I do a lot of counting. Cigarette butts, trees, fence slats, clouds, or the number of paving stones between one phone pole and the next, the windows along the way to the bus stop in the morning, the pedestrians I see from the bus between one stop and the next, red ties on an afternoon in the city. How many steps from the office to the factory gate. I count to keep the world in order, I said. Paul

A morning-flowered dalliance demured and dulcet-sweet with ebullience and efflorescence admiring, cozy cottages and elixirs of eloquence lie waiting at our feet - We'll dance through fetching pleasantries as we walk ephemeral roads evocative epiphanies ethereal, though we know our hearts are linked with gossamer halcyon our day a harbinger of pretty things infused with whispers longing still and gamboling in sultry ways to feelings, all ineffable screaming with insouciance masking labyrinthine paths where, in our nonchalance, we walk through the lilt of love’s new morning rays. Mellifluous murmurings from a babbling brook that soothes our heated passion-songs and panoplies perplexed with thought of shadows carried off with clouds in stormy summer rains… My dear, and that I can call you 'dear' after ripples turned to crashing waves after pyrrhic wins, emotions drained we find our palace sunned and rayed with quintessential moments lit with wildflower lanterns arrayed on verandahs lush with mutual love, the softest love – our preferred décor of life's lilly-blossom gate in white-fenced serendipity… Twilight sunlit heavens cross our gardens, graced with perseverance, bliss, and thee, and thou, so splendid, delicate as a morning dove of charm and mirth – at least with me; our misty mornings glide through air... So with whippoorwill’d sweet poetry - of moonstones, triumphs, wonder-woven in chandliers of winglet cherubs wrought with time immemorial, crafted with innocence, stowed away and brought to light upon our day in hallelujah tapestries of ocean-windswept galleries in breaths of ballet kisses, light, skipping to the breakfast room cascading chrysalis's love in diaphanous imaginings delightful, fleeting, celestial-viewed as in our eyes which come to rest evocative, exuberant on one another’s moon-stowed dreams idyllic, in quiescent ways, peaceful in their radiance resplendent with a myriad of thought soothing muse, rhapsodic song until the somnolence of night spreads out again its shaded truss of luminescent fantasies waiting to be loved by us… Oh, love! Your sincerest pardons begged! I’ve gone too long, I’ve rambled, dear, and on and on and on and on - as if our hours were endless here… A morning toast, with orange-juiced lips exalting transcendent minds suffused with sunrise symphonies organic-born tranquilities sublimed sonorous assemblages with scintillas of eternity beating at our breasts – their embraces but a blushing, longing glance away… I’ll end my charms this enraptured morn' before cacophony and chafe coarse in crude and rough abrade when cynical distrust is laid by hoarse and leeching parasites, distaste fraught with smug disgust by hairy, smelly maladroit mediocrities born of poisoned wells grotesque with selfish lies - shrill and shrieking, biting, creeping around our love, as if they rose from Edgar Allen’s own immortal rumpled decomposing clothes… Oh me, oh my! I am so sorry! can you forgive me? I gone and kissed you for so long, in my morning imaginings, through these words, through this song - ‘twas supposed to be "a trifle treat," but little treats do sometimes last a little longer; and, oh, but oh, but if I could, I surly would keep you just a little longer tarrying here, tarrying here with me this pleasant morn

One presenter was reporting on the fatal shooting of a suspected organized crime figure behind a downtown strip club, which involved much breathless speculation laid over meaningless pictures, mostly of the closed gate in the pink fence, above a ticker that said Moscow Comes to Phoenix, which Reacher figured would annoy Ukrainians everywhere, the two countries being entirely separate now, and proud of it, at least in one direction.

Somehow, what they'd had was already over, and she hadn't even been aware of the end. This happened with roses: it was possible to take them for granted all summer as they wound along fences and gates, and then in September, when they faded, how beautiful they'd once been suddenly took hold. That was when people began to yearn for them, and all winter long they'd watch the bare branches for buds, vowing that this time they'd be grateful for all that they had.

They veer off the main highway onto a private road that travels away from the ocean. A thin row of tall bamboo lines both sides of the narrow roadway that continues 150 feet before dead-ending at a lavish, single-story, traditional Japanese-style home. The entire property is surrounded by an eight-foot-high maroon wooden fence with three separate entrance gates, one in the front, next to the house, and two others in opposite corners of the triangular-shaped backyard.

Every time you jump the fence, it looks like it's going to topple over. Would it kill you to go through the gate?" "Your dad put a lock on it," I said, "so I can't anymore." "Oh-five, oh-four, two-one," she said, rolling her eyes. "Just put in the number, use the gate like a civilized human, and maybe don't even talk to me when you retrieve your misdirected sports paraphernalia. Zero contact would be cool." "But how could I tell you how much I like your new hair if I didn't speak?

And now I see the outside of our house, with the latticed bedroom-windows standing open to let in the sweet-smelling air, and the ragged old rooks'-nests still dangling in the elm-trees at the bottom of the front garden. Now I am in the garden at the back, beyond the yard where the empty pigeon-house and dog-kennel are—a very preserve of butterflies, as I remember it, with a high fence, and a gate and padlock; where the fruit clusters on the trees, riper and richer than fruit has ever been since, in any other garden, and where my mother gathers some in a basket, while I stand by, bolting furtive gooseberries, and trying to look unmoved. A great wind rises, and the summer is gone in a moment. We are playing in the winter twilight, dancing about the parlour. When my mother is out of breath and rests herself in an elbow-chair, I watch her winding her bright curls round her fingers, and straitening her waist, and nobody knows better than I do that she likes to look so well, and is proud of being so pretty.

Meanwhile the thinking person, by intellect usually left-wing but by temperament often right-wing, hovers at the gate of the Socialist fold. He is no doubt aware that he ought to be a Socialist. But he observes first the dullness of individual Socialists, then the apparent flabbiness of Socialist ideals, and veers away. Till quite recently it was natural to veer towards indinerentism. Ten years ago, even five years ago, the typical literary gent wrote books on baroque architecture and had a soul above politics. But that attitude is becoming difficult and even unfashionable. The times are growing harsher, the issues are clearer, the belief that nothing will ever change (i.e. that your dividends will always be safe) is less prevalent. The fence on which the literary gent sits, once as comfortable as the plush cushion of a cathedral-stall, is now pinching his bottom intolerably; more and more he shows a disposition to drop off on one side or the other. It is interesting to notice how many of our leading writers, who a dozen years ago were art for art's saking for all they were worth and would have considered it too vulgar for words to even vote at a general election, are now taking a definite political standpoint; while most of the younger writers, at least those of them who are not mere footlers, have been 'political' from the start. I believe that when the pinch comes there is a terrible danger that the main movement of the intelligentsia will be towards Fascism. . . . That will also be the moment when every person with any brains or decency will know in his bones that he ought to be on the Socialist side. But he will not necessarily come there of his own accord; there are too many ancient prejudices standing in the way. He will have to be persuaded, and by methods that imply an understanding of his viewpoint. Socialists cannot afford to waste any more time in preaching to the converted. Their job now is to make Socialists as rapidly as possible; instead of which, all too often, they are making Fascists.

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it." This

The family lived on an isolated estate of centuries-worn stone, swathed in moss and shadowed in weeping trees. On mischief nights, children from Ilvernath sometimes crept up to its towering wrought iron fence, daring their friends to touch the padlock chained around the gate—the one engraved with a scythe. Grins like goblins, the children murmured, because children in Ilvernath loved fairy tales—especially real ones. Pale as plague and silent as spirits. They’ll tear your throat out and drink your soul. All these tales were deserved.

The family lived on an isolated estate of centuries-worn stone, swatched in moss and shadowed in weeping trees. On mischief nights, children from Ilvernath sometimes crept up to its towering wrought iron fence, daring their friends to touch the padlock chained around the gate—the one engraved with a scythe. Grins like goblins, the children murmured, because children in Ilvernath loved fairy tales—especially real ones. Pale as plague and silent as spirits. They’ll tear your throat out and drink your soul. All these tales were deserved.

The conservative does not defend the Old Regime; he speaks on behalf of old regimes—in the family, the factory, the field. There, ordinary men, and sometimes women, get to play the part of little lords and ladies, supervising their underlings as if they all belong to a feudal estate . . . The task of this type of conservatism---democratic feudalism—-becomes clear: surround these old regimes with fences and gates, protect them from meddlesome intruders like the state or a social movement, while descanting on mobility and innovation, freedom and the future.

She was watching morning television on a local Phoenix affiliate, which had shoved recipes and fashion aside in favor of crime. One presenter was reporting on the fatal shooting of a suspected organized crime figure behind a downtown strip club, which involved much breathless speculation laid over meaningless pictures, mostly of the closed gate in the pink fence, above a ticker that said Moscow Comes to Phoenix, which Reacher figured would annoy Ukrainians everywhere, the two countries being entirely separate now, and proud of it, at least in one direction.

They turned at the gate and passed under the shades knoll where, enclosed in a low fence, the Frome gravestones slanted at crazy angles through the snow. Ethan looked at them curiously. For years that quiet company had mocked his restlessness, his desire for change and freedom. "We never got away—how should you?" seemed to be written on every headstone; and whenever he went in or out of his gate he though with a shiver: "I shall just go on living here till I join them." But now all desire for change vanished, and the sight of the little enclosure gave him a warm sense of continuance and stability.

We have had thousands of years of experience in regulating the ownership of land. We know how to build a fence around a field, place a guard at the gate, and control who can go in. Over the past two centuries we have become extremely sophisticated in regulating the ownership of industry; thus today I can own a piece of General Motors and a bit of Toyota by buying their shares. But we don’t have much experience in regulating the ownership of data, which is inherently a far more difficult task, because unlike land and machines, data is everywhere and nowhere at the same time, it can move at the speed of light, and you can create as many copies of it as you want.

One day soon, you’ll hear a car pull up to your curb, an engine cut out. You’ll hear footsteps coming up your front walk. Like they did for Edward Wayne Edwards, twenty-nine years after he killed Timothy Hack and Kelly Drew in Sullivan, Wisconsin. Like they did for Kenneth Lee Hicks, thirty years after he killed Lori Billingsley in Aloha, Oregon. The doorbell rings. No side gates are left open. You’re long past leaping over a fence. Take one of your hyper, gulping breaths. Clench your teeth. Inch timidly toward the insistent bell. This is how it ends for you. “You’ll be silent forever, and I’ll be gone in the dark,” you threatened a victim once. Open the door. Show us your face.

is something a friend once told me. She said that every single one of us at birth is given an emotional acre all our own. You get one, your awful Uncle Phil gets one, I get one, Tricia Nixon gets one, everyone gets one. And as long as you don’t hurt anyone, you really get to do with your acre as you please. You can plant fruit trees or flowers or alphabetized rows of vegetables, or nothing at all. If you want your acre to look like a giant garage sale, or an auto-wrecking yard, that’s what you get to do with it. There’s a fence around your acre, though, with a gate, and if people keep coming onto your land and sliming it or trying to get you to do what they think is right, you get to ask them to leave. And they have to go, because this is your acre.

Two o’clock in the morning. On the outskirts of Sacramento. An abandoned shopping mall. Reconstruction would eventually transform the site into upscale apartments with numerous amenities. A chain-link fence encircled the large property, emblazoned with red-lettered signs warning of hazards and against trespassing. Although nothing remained in the mall worth stealing, a guard was usually stationed in a car inside the only gate in the fence, less to deter thieves than to dissuade adventurous urban explorers—those self-described concrete spelunkers—who engaged in explorations of everything from abandoned hotels to the maze of service tunnels underlying major cities. Such exploring was illegal, but if some catacomber or amateur city archeologist were injured in one of their adventures, there was every reason to be concerned that a jury of the ignorant and a judge with issues would award millions to the trespasser. On

She had heard about telekinetic phenomena. Where she had heard about it she didn't know, but she knew telekinesis was the ability to move objects by thinking about them. She felt thrilled with the possibilities of her newfound power. She wondered if she could move larger things, too. She glanced at the Dumpster, narrowed her eyes in concentration, and strained. The side of the Dumpster buckled with a sharp pop. She gasped. Could she bend objects, too? A noise like rattling chains startled her, and she peered back down the alley. Justin and Mason were shaking the double gate in the fence as if they were trying to break the chain lock. She turned back to the trash piled at the dead end and raised her hands like a great conductor of an orchestra. Soon lettuce leaves, orange peels, coffee grounds, and papers were flying everywhere. With a flick of her wrists, the garbage bounced away from her, heading for Justin and Mason.

She followed the truck down the highway, and finally onto a road which wound through the barren hills at the foot of the mountains. It was nearly sunset when the girls entered a rocky pass and came out high above a valley. At the far side loomed a huge mountain with a group of low buildings nestled at its foot. Bess pointed to them. “There’s the ranch, and that’s Shadow Mountain.” “I see how they got their names,” said Nancy. “The great peak throws its shadow over the whole valley.” Half an hour later, they drove through a weather-beaten wooden gate into the ranch yard. Nancy pulled up to the ranch house, a long, one-story adobe building with a vine-covered portico across the front. To the north of the house were the corral and stable. Beyond these stretched a large meadow, bordered by a wire fence. In the opposite direction lay the bunkhouse, and south of this, some distance away, a smaller, enclosed meadow. In it cattle were grazing.

You’re just pushing your food around, aren’t you? You’ve barely taken two bites. I thought you loved Lou’s Cornish hens.” “I do. I’m sorry. All I can think about is that English project due this week.” I look over at Ryder with a faux scowl. “We’re already way behind--you’ve always got some excuse. We should probably work on it tonight.” “Probably so,” Ryder says with an exasperated-sounding sigh. “That’s the third project the two of you have been paired up on,” Mama says, shaking her head. “I hope you two can behave well enough to get your work done properly. No more arguing like the last time.” We’d pretended to fight over a calculus project. Yes, a calculus project. Is there really any such thing? “We’re trying really hard to behave,” I say, shooting Ryder a sidelong glance. “Right?” His cheeks pinken deliciously at the innuendo. I love it when Ryder blushes. Totally adorable. “Right,” he mumbles, his gaze fixed on his lap. Laura Grace gives us both a pointed look. “You two better learn to get along, you hear? You’re going to be spending a lot of time together for the next four years.” Four years. Just the two of us--away from our meddling mamas. I have to bite my lip to force back the smile that’s threatening to give us away. “She’s right,” Mama says, nodding. “The only way I’m allowing Jemma to go to NYU is if she promises not to go off campus without Ryder to escort her.” Escort me? What is it, the 1950s or something? Besides, I don’t think she realizes that NYU isn’t a traditional campus. There’s no fences or gates or anything like that. I guess she’ll find out when she comes to visit over Thanksgiving, but by then it’ll be too late. That’s what she gets for not looking over the application materials I gave her. “Fine,” I say, trying to sound slightly annoyed. “I promise.” Beneath the table, Ryder releases my hand and lays it open in my lap, palm up. And then I feel him tracing letters on my palm with his fingertip. I. L. O. V. E. Y.O.U. I can’t help myself--I shiver. I shiver a lot when Ryder’s around, it turns out. He seems to have that effect on me.

Joanne Sanders, a broad woman in her forties, posed with friends, family, and Snowball in photographs displayed on the mantel of the fake fireplace. She had shoulder-length brown hair and bangs teased high above her brow. I could picture her behind ten inches of bulletproof glass sneering at me with gloss-encased lips for filling out my deposit slip incorrectly. I fed Snowball half a cup of kibble and a spoonful of wet food as my envelope of information directed. She ate it quickly while making funny little squeaking noises. Once she had licked her bowl to a bright sheen, we headed out for my first walk as a dog-walker. I steered us off of East End Avenue and onto the esplanade that runs along the river. The water reflected the sun in bright silver glints. I smelled oil and brine. We reached Carl Schurz Park and turned into the dog run for small dogs. The gate leading into the run reached only to my knees, as did the rest of the fence designed to keep small dogs in and big ones out. A sign on the gate read, "Dogs over 25 pounds not permitted." Ten dogs under 25 pounds, and one who was probably a little over, played together in the pen. Their owners, in groups of three or four, sat on worn wooden benches and talked about dogs. Snowball ran to join a poodle growling at a puppy. They intimidated it behind its owner's calves. Then the poodle, a miniature gray curly thing with long ears, mounted Snowball. I turned to the river and watched a giant barge inch by.

I loved driving with Marlboro Man. I saw things I’d never seen before, things I’d never even considered in my two and a half decades of city life. For the first time ever, I began to grasp the concept of north, south, east, and west, though I imagine it would take another twenty-five years before I got them straight. I saw fence lines and gates made of welded iron pipe, and miles upon miles of barbed wire. I saw creeks--rocky, woodsy creeks that made the silly water hazard in my backyard seem like a little mud puddle. And I saw wide open land as far as the eye could see. I’d never known such beauty. Marlboro Man loved showing me everything, pointing at pastures and signs and draws and lakes and giving me the story behind everything we saw. The land, both on his family’s ranch and on the ranches surrounding it, made sense to him: he saw it not as one wide open, never-ending space, but as neatly organized parcels, each with its own purpose and history. “Betty Smith used to own this part of our ranch with her husband,” he’d say. “They never had kids and were best friends with my grandparents.” Then he’d tell some legend of Betty Smith’s husband’s grandfather, remembering such vivid details, you’d think he’d been there himself. I absorbed it all, every word of it. The land around him pulsated with the heartbeats of all who’d lived there before…and as if it were his duty to pay honor to each and every one of them, he told me their names, their stories, their relationship, their histories. I loved that he knew all those things.

Hello,” she says. “My name is Amanda Ritter. In this file I will tell you only what you need to know. I am the leader of an organization fighting for justice and peace. This fight has become increasingly more important--and consequently, nearly impossible--in the past few decades. That is because of this.” Images flash across the wall, almost too fast for me to see. A man on his knees with a gun pressed to his forehead. The woman pointing it at him, her face emotionless. From a distance, a small person hanging by the neck from a telephone pole. A hole in the ground the size of a house, full of bodies. And there are other images too, but they move faster, so I get only impressions of blood and bone and death and cruelty, empty faces, soulless eyes, terrified eyes. Just when I have had enough, when I feel like I am going to scream if I see any more, the woman reappears on the screen, behind her desk. “You do not remember any of that,” she says. “But if you are thinking these are the actions of a terrorist group or a tyrannical government regime, you are only partially correct. Half of the people in those pictures, committing those terrible acts, were your neighbors. Your relatives. Your coworkers. The battle we are fighting is not against a particular group. It is against human nature itself--or at least what it has become.” This is what Jeanine was willing to enslave minds and murder people for--to keep us all from knowing. To keep us all ignorant and safe and inside the fence. There is a part of me that understands. “That is why you are so important,” Amanda says. “Our struggle against violence and cruelty is only treating the symptoms of a disease, not curing it. You are the cure. “In order to keep you safe, we devised a way for you to be separated from us. From our water supply. From our technology. From our societal structure. We have formed your society in a particular way in the hope that you will rediscover the moral sense most of us have lost. Over time, we hope that you will begin to change as most of us cannot. “The reason I am leaving this footage for you is so that you will know when it’s time to help us. You will know that it is time when there are many among you whose minds appear to be more flexible than the others. The name you should give those people is Divergent. Once they become abundant among you, your leaders should give the command for Amity to unlock the gate forever, so that you may emerge from your isolation.” And that is what my parents wanted to do: to take what we had learned and use it to help others. Abnegation to the end. “The information in this video is to be restricted to those in government only,” Amanda says. “You are to be a clean slate. But do not forget us.” She smiles a little. “I am about to join your number,” she says. “Like the rest of you, I will voluntarily forget my name, my family, and my home. I will take on a new identity, with false memories and a false history. But so that you know the information I have provided you with is accurate, I will tell you the name I am about to take as my own.” Her smile broadens, and for a moment, I feel that I recognize her. “My name will be Edith Prior,” she says. “And there is much I am happy to forget.” Prior. The video stops. The projector glows blue against the wall. I clutch Tobias’s hand, and there is a moment of silence like a withheld breath. Then the shouting begins.

When the bullhorn signaled that he'd met the qualifying time,he struggled to gather his wits,waiting until Devil was right alongside the gate before he freed his hand,cutting himself loose. He flew through the air and over the corral fence,landing in the dirt at Marilee Trainor's feet. "My God! Don't move." She was beside him in the blink of an eye,kneeling in the dirt,probing for broken bones. Wyatt lay perfectly still,enjoying the feel of those clever, practiced hands moving over him.When she moved from his legs to his torso and arms,he opened his eyes to narrow slits and watched her from beneath lowered lids. She was the perfect combination of beauty and brains.He could see the wheels turning as she did a thorough exam.Even her brow,furrowed in concentration,couldn't mar that flawless complexion. Her eyes, the color of the palest milk chocolate, were narrowed in thought.Strands of red hair dipped over one cheek, giving her a sultry look. Satisfied that nothing was broken, she sat back on her heels,feeling a moment of giddy relief. That was when she realized that he was staring. She waved a hand before his eyes. "How many fingers can you see?" "Four fingers and a thumb. Or should I say four beautiful,long,slender fingers and one perfect thumb,connected to one perfect arm of one perfectly gorgeous female? And,I'm happy to add,there's no ring on the third finger of that hand." She caught the smug little grin on his lips. Her tone hardened. "I get it. A showboat.I should have known.I don't have time to waste on some silver-tongued actor." "Why,thank you.I had no idea you'd examined my tongue.Mind if I examine yours?" She started to stand,but his hand shot out,catching her by the wrist. "Sorry.That was really cheesy, but I couldn't resist teasing you." His tone altered,deepened,just enough to have her glancing over to see if he was still teasing. He met her look. "Are you always this serious?" Despite his apology,she wasn't about to let him off the hook,or change her mind about him.

knew that she was picturing the lonely dogs at the shelter. She felt her own eyes fill up. Lizzie could remember so many times when she had left the shelter at the end of the day feeling so, so sorry for all the dogs she could not take home with her. But then Aunt Amanda shook her head. “Still, I just can’t let Pugsley drive all the other dogs crazy. Did you see him stealing everybody’s toys last time you were here? He kept stashing them over behind the slide. There must have been ten toys over there by the end of the day!” Lizzie nodded. “I saw,” she said. She had also seen Max and another dog, Ruby, sniffing all over, looking for their toys. Mr. Pest was a troublemaker, no doubt about it. But still. Pugsley was just a puppy. And he didn’t know any better because nobody had ever taught him the right way to behave. Maybe she, Lizzie, could help Pugsley become a dog that somebody would be happy to own. “What if I tried to train him a little bit, during the days when I’m here?” she asked Aunt Amanda. Aunt Amanda shook her head. “I think Ken is serious about giving him up,” she said. “Pugsley won’t be coming here anymore.” She put her hand on Lizzie’s shoulder. “I know you care,” she said. “So do I. But there’s really nothing we can do. Let’s go see what everybody’s up to. I think it’s time for some outdoor play.” Lizzie tried to smile. She loved taking the dogs outside to the fenced play yard out in back. “Can Pugsley come?” she asked. “Of course!” Aunt Amanda smiled back. “What fun would it be without Mr. Pest?” Then her smile faded. Lizzie knew what Aunt Amanda was thinking. And she agreed. Bowser’s Backyard just would not be the same without Pugsley around. Yes, it would be calmer. But it would not be as much fun. Aunt Amanda was right. “She’s right, isn’t she, Mr. Pest?” Lizzie said, when she found the pug in the nap room. He was quiet for once, curled up with Hoss on the bottom bunk. They looked so cute together! Lizzie sat down for a moment to pat the tiny pug and the gigantic Great Dane. They made such a funny pair! Aunt Amanda had told Lizzie that when she first opened Bowser’s Backyard she thought it would be a good idea to separate the big dogs from the little ones. But the dogs wanted to be together! They whined at the gates that kept them apart until Aunt Amanda gave up and let them all mingle. From then on, big dogs and little dogs wrestled, played, and napped together

It was getting difficult to see exactly what was going on in the pool and a fourth officer jumped in as one came up with the unconscious form of the first cop. While others pulled the half-drowned man from the pool, three more wrestled Skorzeny to the surface and dragged him to the steps at the shallow end of the pool. He wasn't struggling any longer. Nor was he breathing with any apparent difficulty. The biggest of the three cops later admitted to punching him as hard as he could in the stomach and Skorzey doubled over. Another half-dragged him, still on his feet, shirt torn, jacket ripped, out of the pool and put a handcuff on his left wrist. Skorzeny pulled his arm away from the cop and, suddenly straightening, elbow-jabbed him in the gut, sending him sprawling and rolling back into the pool. Skorzeny turned toward the back fence and was now between the pool and a small palm tree. Before him were two advancing officers, pistols leveled. Behind him two more circled the pool. Skorzeny lunged forward and all fired simultaneously. The noise was deafening. Lights in neighboring houses began to go on. Skorzeny's body twitched and bucked as the heavy slugs ripped through his body. His forward momentum carried him into the officers ahead of him and he half-crawled, half-staggered to the southeast corner of the yard where another gate was set into the fiberglass fencing. Two more officers, across the pool, cut loose with their pistols, emptying them into this writing body which danced like a puppet. Another cop fired two shots from his pump-action shotgun and Skorzeny was lifted clean off his feet and slammed against the gate, sagging to the ground. En masse from both ends of the pool they advanced, when he gave out with a terrible hissing snarl and started to rise once more. All movement ceased as the cops, to a man, stood frozen in their tracks. Skorzeny stood there like some hideous caricature, his shredding clothing and skin hanging like limp rags from his scarecrow form. His flesh was ripped in several places and he was oozing something that looked like watered-down blood. It was pinkish and transparent. He stood there like a living nightmare. Then he straightened and raised his fist with the cuff still dangling from it like a charm bracelet. 'Fools!' he shrieked. 'You can't kill me. You can't even hurt me.' Overhead, the copter hovered, the copilot giving a blow-by-blow description of the fight over the radio. The police on the ground were paralyzed. Nearly thirty shots had been fired (the bullets later tallied in reports turned in by the participating officers) and their quarry was still as strong as ever. He'd been hit repeatedly in the head and legs, so a bulletproof vest wasn't the answer. And at distances sometimes as little as five feet, they could hardly have missed. They'd seen him hit. They stood frozen in an eerie tableau as the still roiling pool water threw weird reflections all over the yard. Then Skorzeny did the most frightening thing of all. He smiled. A red-rimmed, hideous grin revealing fangs that 'would have done justice to a Doberman Pinscher.

Hello,” she says. “My name is Amanda Ritter. In this file I will tell you only what you need to know. I am the leader of an organization fighting for justice and peace. This fight has become increasingly more important—and consequently, nearly impossible—in the past few decades. That is because of this.” Images flash across the wall, almost too fast for me to see. A man on his knees with a gun pressed to his forehead. The woman pointing it at him, her face emotionless. From a distance, a small person hanging by the neck from a telephone pole. A hole in the ground the size of a house, full of bodies. And there are other images too, but they move faster, so I get only impressions of blood and bone and death and cruelty, empty faces, soulless eyes, terrified eyes. Just when I have had enough, when I feel like I am going to scream if I see any more, the woman reappears on the screen, behind her desk. “You do not remember any of that,” she says. “But if you are thinking these are the actions of a terrorist group or a tyrannical government regime, you are only partially correct. Half of the people in those pictures, committing those terrible acts, were your neighbors. Your relatives. Your coworkers. The battle we are fighting is not against a particular group. It is against human nature itself—or at least what it has become.” This is what Jeanine was willing to enslave minds and murder people for—to keep us all from knowing. To keep us all ignorant and safe and inside the fence. There is a part of me that understands. “That is why you are so important,” Amanda says. “Our struggle against violence and cruelty is only treating the symptoms of a disease, not curing it. You are the cure. “In order to keep you safe, we devised a way for you to be separated from us. From our water supply. From our technology. From our societal structure. We have formed your society in a particular way in the hope that you will rediscover the moral sense most of us have lost. Over time, we hope that you will begin to change as most of us cannot. “The reason I am leaving this footage for you is so that you will know when it’s time to help us. You will know that it is time when there are many among you whose minds appear to be more flexible than the others. The name you should give those people is Divergent. Once they become abundant among you, your leaders should give the command for Amity to unlock the gate forever, so that you may emerge from your isolation.” And that is what my parents wanted to do: to take what we had learned and use it to help others. Abnegation to the end. “The information in this video is to be restricted to those in government only,” Amanda says. “You are to be a clean slate. But do not forget us.” She smiles a little. “I am about to join your number,” she says. “Like the rest of you, I will voluntarily forget my name, my family, and my home. I will take on a new identity, with false memories and a false history. But so that you know the information I have provided you with is accurate, I will tell you the name I am about to take as my own.” Her smile broadens, and for a moment, I feel that I recognize her. “My name will be Edith Prior,” she says. “And there is much I am happy to forget.” Prior.

The result was a spectacular cemetery with an Egyptian gate and fence that surrounded lakes, winding paths, and lush foliage. People were ecstatic, and throngs of famous and ordinary city dwellers went there to walk, meditate, and play. “Cemeteries are all the ‘rage’; people lounge in them and use them (as their tastes are inclined) for walking, making love, weeping, sentimentalizing, and everything in short,” an Englishman wrote after he toured Mount Auburn.

today’s moneyed crowd, mainly black politicians, own all the glitzy palatial dwellings, surrounded by security gates and electric fences and are watched vigilantly by minimally paid guards. Sometimes there are even walls topped with slices of broken glass, in case anyone wishes to shred their hands and feet trying out that particular route in to steal whatever it is the wealthy Kikuyu bigwigs are protecting so fiercely.

Holy Mother is not meant to be a fence,” writes Estes. “Holy Mother is a gate.

I also heard a good metaphor from a rancher. He was talking cows, but I think it works with people too. He explained that there are two ways to keep your cows together. One is by building fences and gates. The other is by creating a really good food source. When you create a really good food source in the center, you don’t have to worry as much about all the gates and fences and who’s in and who’s out.

It was somewhere between being awake and being asleep—a netherworld of sorts. That was the only explanation for why he was walking in a park, through a large baseball field with short, recently cut grass. No one cuts grass anymore. Slowly, the sights became familiar, and he pieced together the evidence. There, a gazebo surrounded by hurricane fencing, with a sign across the entrance gate reading: “Gazebo Reservations Available.

Is there anything else we should do?" said Poppy. Scarlett clapped her hands. "I know! We could set some booby traps." Sam looked at her as if she was mad, but Poppy's mind was whirring. "You're right. You know that roll of electric fence wire in the hay barn?" The other two nodded. "Why don't we lay it along the front gate so when he goes to open it he gets an electric shock?" Scarlett grinned evilly. "Oh yes, I'm loving that idea. And we could arrange those bits of barbed wire he so kindly left on the driveway so he gets a puncture." "Neat," Poppy said. "What about tying together baler twine to make a trip wire? We could fix it just inside the gate." Scarlett nodded vigorously. "And I could do the old Tom and Jerry classic and leave a couple of rakes on the ground. With any luck he'll stand on one and whack himself on the head." Sam's eyebrows were raised as he looked from one girl to the other. "Remind me never to get on the wrong side of you two. You're reprobates." "He won't be getting anything more than he deserves," said Poppy grimly.   Half

When we reach the fence, we see the Dauntless standing in our headlight beams, blocking the gate. Their blue armbands stand out against the rest of their clothing. I try to keep my expression pleasant. I will not be able to fool them into thinking I’m Amity with a scowl on my face. A dark-skinned man with a gun in hand approaches Marcus’s window. He shines a flashlight at Marcus first, then Christina, then me. I squint into the beam, and force a smile at the man like I don’t mind bright lights in the eyes and guns pointed at my head in the slightest. The Amity must be deranged if this is how they really think. Or they’ve been eating too much of that bread. “So tell me,” the man says. “What’s an Abnegation member doing in a truck with two Amity?” “These two girls volunteered to bring provisions to the city,” Marcus says, “and I volunteered to escort them so that they would be safe.” “Also, we don’t know how to drive,” says Christina, grinning. “My dad tried to teach me years ago but I kept confusing the gas pedal for the brake pedal, and you can imagine what a disaster that was! Anyway, it was really nice of Joshua to volunteer to take us, because it would have taken us forever otherwise, and the boxes were so heavy--” The Dauntless man holds up his hand. “Okay, I get it.” “Oh, of course. Sorry.” Christina giggles. “I just thought I would explain, because you seemed so confused, and no wonder, because how many times do you encounter this--””Right,” the man says. “And do you intend to return to the city?” “Not anytime soon,” Marcus says. “All right. Go ahead, then.” He nodes to the other Dauntless by the gate. One of them types a series of numbers on the keypad, and the gate slides open to admit us. Marcus nods to the guard who let us through and drives over the worn path to Amity headquarters. The truck’s headlights catch tire tracks and prairie grass and insects weaving back and forth. In the darkness to my right I see fireflies lighting up to a rhythm that is like a heartbeat. After a few seconds, Marcus glances at Christina. “What on earth was that?” “There’s nothing the Dauntless hate more than cheerful Amity babble,” says Christina, lifting a shoulder. “I figured if he got annoyed it would distract him and he would let us through.” I smile with all my teeth. “You are a genius.” “I know.” She tosses her head like she’s throwing her hair over one shoulder, only she doesn’t have enough to throw. “Except,” says Marcus. “Joshua is not an Abnegation name.” “Whatever. As if anyone knows the difference.

In October of 1991, on the day I met Steve, it was only by chance that I stopped at his wildlife park at all. I had been sleeping in the backseat of a car on the way back from a barbecue at a friend of a friend’s house. Up front, Lori’s friend knew I was interested in zoos. When he saw a sign for this one, he debated with himself whether he should wake me. Even when he did, I wasn’t sure if this reptile park was going to be much more than a few snakes in little glass tanks. So it was only by chance that I was on that highway at all, and only chance that I stopped. And it was only by chance that Steve conducted the croc show that day. Some days, Wes did the show. Chance. Fate. Destiny. These were words I lived by. I believed my life had been shaped for a special purpose. But with Steve’s death my faith was tested. Was it pure chance that Steve, a man who cheated mortality almost every single day of his adult life, died in such a bizarre accident? During the decade and a half that I knew him, I don’t think a week went by when he didn’t get a bite, blow, or injury of some kind. His knee and shoulder plagued him from years of jumping crocs. As Steve erected a fence at our Brigalow Belt conservation property, a big fence-post driver he was using slipped and landed directly on his head, compressing the fifth disk in his neck. Even injured, he still managed to push on--at the zoo, filming, and doing heavy construction. He went at work like a bull at a gate. He climbed trees with orangutans. He traversed the most remote deserts and the most impossible mountains. He packed his life chock-a-block full with risks of all kinds. “I get called an adrenaline junkie every other minute,” Steve said. “I’m just fine with that.” One crowded hour of glorious life is worth more than an age without a name. I had no regrets for Steve’s glorious life, and I know he couldn’t have lived any other way.

Ironically enough, when we returned to the zoo, the Dr. Dolittle cameo almost came true. We had to transfer a big female crocodile named Toolakea to another enclosure. Steve geared up for the move as he always did. “Don’t think about catching Toolakea,” he instructed his crew, me included, before we ever got near to the enclosure. “If you’re concentrating on catching her, she’ll know it. We’ll never get a top-jaw rope on. Crocs know when they’re being hunted.” For millions of years, wild animals have evolved to use every sense to tune into the world around them. Steve understood that their survival depended on it. So as I approached the enclosure, I thought of mowing the lawn, or doing the croc show, or picking hibiscus flowers to feed the lizards. Anything but catching Toolakea. It went like clockwork. Steve top-jaw-roped Toolakea, and we all jumped her. He decided that since she was only a little more than nine feet long, we would be able to just lift her over the fence and carry her to her other enclosure. Steve never built his enclosures with gates. He knew that sooner or later, someone could make a mistake and not latch a gate properly. We had to be masters at fence jumping. He picked up Toolakea around her shoulders with her neck held firmly against his upper arm. This would protect his face if she started struggling. The rest of us backed him up and helped to lift Toolakea over the fence. All of a sudden she exploded, twisting and writhing in everyone’s arms. “Down, down, down,” Steve shouted. That was our signal to pin the crocodile again before picking her up. Not everyone reacted quickly enough. As Steve moved to the ground, the people on the tail were still standing up. That afforded Toolakea the opportunity to twist her head around and grab hold of Steve’s thigh. The big female croc sank her teeth deep into his flesh. I never realized it until later. Steve didn’t flinch. He settled the crocodile on the ground, keeping her eyes covered to quiet her down. We lifted her again. This time she cleared the fence easily. I noticed the blood trickling down Steve’s leg. We got to the other enclosure before I asked what had happened, and he showed me. There were a dozen tears in the fabric of his khaki shorts. A half dozen of Toolakea’s teeth had gotten through to his flesh, putting a number of puncture holes in his upper thigh. As usual, Steve didn’t bother with the wound. He cleaned it out and carried on, but even after his leg had healed, he couldn’t feel the temperature accurately on his leg. Once, about a month after the incident, I got a drink out of the fridge and rested it on his thigh. “I can feel something there,” he said. “Hot or cold?” I quizzed. “I don’t know,” he said. The croc-torn khaki shorts he wore that day made an amazing souvenir for a lucky sponsor of the zoo. People who donated a certain amount of money to our conservation efforts received a bonus in return: one of Steve’s uniforms and a photograph of him in it. Steve was very proud to include his khakis with teeth holes in them as the gift for a generous supporter.

Alice Wakes at Two and Looks Out the Window" A gate, she thinks, I'm the gate of my breathing, of this powdery chant, and I'll always mistake stars for dust exploding white in the noon sun. They dance, those jewels, as will I, dance to the zoo with my blue feet on, with a silver drum, dance bad words and hard tunes, dance the colors men blush to. Once there I'll climb the fences, seduce the alarms, I'll move from lion to monkey to lamb and kiss the small packets of their hearts. Then come home to bed, to warm eternity, to the wheel that twines my flesh and spins it to sleep. So fall, star, and meet your embrace. I'll name you True Love and lick you with wishes.

On the far end of the village square is a fence. After you open the gate and cross the large field, which also belongs to Steger, you’re in the forest again, and if you’re not too afraid of the Cold Woman and keep going, in three hours you will be in the next village, which is not much bigger. There, however, the boy has never been. He has never been elsewhere. And although several people who have been elsewhere before have told him that it’s exactly the same there as here, he can’t stop wondering where you would end up if you just kept going on and on, not merely to the next village, but farther and farther still.

In the sleep to me is given Our last eden of stars up high City of clean water towers, Golden Bakchisarai There behind a colored fencing By the pensive water stalled Village of the Tsar's gardens With rejoicing we recalled. And the eagles of Catherine Suddenly recognized - it's that! He had flown to valley bottom From the ornate bronze-clad gate. That the song of parting heartache In the memory longer lives, The dark-bodied mother autumn Brought to me the redding leaves And she sprinkled on her soles Where we parted in the sun And from where for land of shadows You had left, my soothing one.

Laguna Province, island of Luzon 28 January 1945, at Los Banos Internment Camp, one American male civilian murdered by Japanese Army guard. Guard and officer later identified by name. This American civilian had slipped out through the wire fence and had purchased some vegetables from the native Filipino farmers. He was observed coming back through the fence and was shot. The American had been through the fence on former occasions without being molested. He was taken to the Japanese guardhouse, located at the main gate. Numerous other civilian internees asked permission to try to do something for him; but their aid was refused by the Japanese, and he remained lying in the open until he died.

The truck pulled through, and the gate was locked behind it. “Well, that’s all we can do here,” Caleb said in a relieved tone. “My God, do I need a decaf cappuccino after this nightmare of an evening.” Stone said, “We need to get inside the fence.” “Right,” Reuben agreed. “Are you both insane!” Caleb cried out.

Fire was one of so many things that could render a man helpless, and now, as Karel reached the corral fence and circled around to the gate, his brothers’ eyes unblinking and tepid and fixed on him, he reckoned that family was another. A man couldn’t any more choose which one he was born into than he could will it to stay together when so many things abraded and raveled the fibers that were meant to keep it bound. Try to hold it all together with force, with a harness and a hard hand the way their father had, and it grew so thick with the cordage of resentment that you couldn’t even get your hands around it.

You daddy so dumb when he jump the fence the gate was open!

Our homes become our castles, our fence become our motes, our gates open only from the inside. Though we are touted as the richest country in the world, the United States is statistically the most medicated nation as well. The fact that those two notable pieces of data go hand-in-hand should cause us to ask some serious questions about the way we have come to do life.

Were the Comanches still out there, hidden from sight but watching? Was that lance a message from Hunter to his people? I will come to you like the wind. I am your destiny. She visualized the Indian returning with a dirty blanket or two, a scrawny horse he no longer wanted, perhaps a battered pot. And Uncle Henry, coward that he was, would waste no time in handing her over. Loretta Simpson, bought by a Comanche. No, not by just any Comanche, but Hunter himself. It would be whispered in horror all along the Brazos and Navasota rivers. Hunter’s woman. She’d never be able to hold her head up again. No decent man would even look at her. If she lived… With a whining intake of air, Loretta lunged to her feet and ran to the door. Before anyone could stop her, she was across the porch and down the steps. She’d show that heathen. If this was a message that she belonged to him, she’d destroy it. Grabbing the lance, she worked it free from the earth. “Loretta, you fool girl!” Tom came after her, catching her arm to whirl her around. “All you’ll do is rile him.” Jerking free, she headed for the front gate. Rile him or not, if she didn’t refute the Comanche’s claim, it would be the same as agreeing to it. Maybe he would come back for her, but if he was out there watching, at least he’d know he wasn’t welcome. She walked beyond the yard fence, then turned and swung the lance against the top rail. The resilient shaft bounced back at her. She swung again. And again. The lance seemed to take life, resisting her, mocking her. She envisioned the Comanche’s arrogant face and bludgeoned it, venting her hatred. For Ma, for Papa. She’d never belong to a filthy redskin, never. Sweat began to run down her face, burning her eyes, salty on her lips, but still she swung the lance. It had to break. He might be out there watching. If his weapon defeated her, it would be the same as if he had. Her shoulders began to ache. Each lift of her arms became an effort. Beyond the realm of her immediate focus, she saw her family standing around her in shocked horror, staring as if she had lost her mind. Perhaps she had. Loretta fell to her knees, gazing at the intact lance. Willow, green willow. No wonder the dad-blamed thing wouldn’t break. Furious, she snatched the feathers off of it and ripped them into shreds, sputtering when the bits of down flew back in her face. Then she knelt there, heaving for air, so exhausted all the fight in her was drained away. He had won.

[…] A brother don’t need a gate – he jumps the fence. That’s street.’ ‘Again, please?’ said Howard. ‘Street, street,’ bellowed Zora. It’s like, “being street”, knowing the street – in Levi’s sad little world if you’re a Negro you have some kind of mysterious holy communion with sidewalks and corners.

As Americans maintain their privacy by protecting their space (e.g., big cars, privacy fences, gated communities), Swedes maintain their privacy by remaining quiet. Swedes are generally slow to divulge personal information, particularly when it comes to sharing problems.

At the end of the avenue, a large villa was set back from the road with a surrounding fence covered in hessian. This was ‘The Vatican’, the secret headquarters of the Department of National Security and Order – ZAPU’s spy agency. It made for a more discreet location for a rendezvous than Zimbabwe House, ZAPU’s headquarters in the city, which was believed to be under constant surveillance by the Zambian authorities and perhaps others. The Vatican was an anonymous-looking four-bedroom villa, but several sentries were positioned just behind the wrought-iron front gates. As the car drew in, one of the guards called through their arrival on a radio set.

When asked for a one line comment on his new book, Bob replied, "Fifty Shades of Grey on steroids".

They built an iron gate, high electric fence, and four watchtowers around the Kazakh school,” he recalled. “If we found anyone suspicious through the ID checks, they would send them to the Kazakh school. They had suddenly turned it into a prison. They forced all of the people who had been visiting mosques, praying, or wearing headscarves to go to that school.

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Sometimes we have bad on the inside and good on the outside. In these instances, we need to be able to open up our boundaries to let the good in and the bad out. In other words, our fences need gates in them. For example, if I find that I have some pain or sin within, I need to open up and communicate it to God and others, so that I can be healed. Confessing pain and sin helps to “get it out” so that it does not continue to poison me on the inside (1 John 1:9; James 5:16; Mark 7:21–23). And when the good is on the outside, we need to open our gates and “let it in.

Brandt stood at the gate as a garden club arrived at his nursery. One of the women reached over the fence and picked a rhododendron flower. Brandt immediately closed the gate and told the group to go home.

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By obligation Pamela read me “The Posting,” a warning to would-be owners that pure Border collies are essentially smarter than your average local elected official and slippier than Cool Hand Luke. They can jump six-foot fences, dig under walls, open doors and gates and in an emergency, hot-wire any automobile manufactured before 1998.

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I’m pretty sure he plans on killing me anyway,” I said with a shrug. “At least if he kills me for this, it was for something that matters.” “I-” “Tell him I came here and spoke with you about Darius. Tell him I made some excuse to get you to leave the room and by the time you came back I’d done this. Put all the blame on me. I mean that.” “Okay…” she said hesitantly and I met her eye. “Do I need to make you swear it on the stars?” I growled. “No. I’ll tell him. Thank you, Roxanya.” “It’s Tory. Only Darius calls me Roxy and I can’t make him stop, but I don’t want anyone else making a habit of it,” I said. Although at this point if Darius started calling me Tory it would probably just be weird. Not that I’d ever admit that I was okay with the Roxy thing. “Okay. Thank you, Tory.” I smirked at her and hit post. Catalina gasped as Xavier’s secret went viral and I glanced down at my Atlas as reactions and comments began to pour in before I locked the screen. Shit, what if Daddy Acrux really does kill me for this? “Run, Tory,” Catalina breathed, real fear dancing in her eyes. “Run for the gate and get back to the academy before he comes back. If he finds you here-” “Consider me gone.” I barked a laugh as nerves made my heart flutter. Catalina smiled at me before ripping her dress off, knocking her hair free of its perfectly styled bun, flashing me those gloriously fake tits and leaping out of thewindow after her son. She transformed as she plummeted and my lips fell open as a stunning silver Dragon burst from her flesh. She beat a path up towards the clouds just as Xavier dipped beneath them with an excited whinny. I quickly raised my Atlas and snapped a picture of the two of them dancing through the sky before I took a running jump out of the window too. My wings burst to life at my back and I flew hard and fast along the drive until I soared over the gates, beyond the anti-stardust wards where I landed quickly, my boots skidding in the gravel. I grabbed the stardust from my pocket and winked at the startled guards half a second before I tossed it over my head and the stars whisked me back to the academy. I stumbled as they deposited me and suddenly strong arms locked around my chest from behind, making me scream in surprise. A hand slapped over my mouth and I stilled for a moment as the scent of smoke and cedar overwhelmed me. Darius dragged me back through the hole in the wards, pulled me through the fence and shoved me up against a huge tree at the edge of campus before he took his hand from my mouth. His hands landed either side of my head as he penned me in, glaring down at me with an angry as fuck Dragon peering out of his eyes, his pupils transformed into reptilian slits and a hint of smoke slipped between his lips. He was only wearing sweatpants and I got the impression he’d flown here to ambush me the moment I returned. I guess he didn’t like my FaeBook post. “What the fuck were you thinking?” he demanded. “Whoa, chill out dude,” I said, pressing my hands to his chest to push him back. He didn’t move a single inch and I just ended up with my hands pressed to his rock hard muscles, his heart pounding frantically beneath my right palm. “Do you know what you’ve done?” Darius snarled. “Father could kill Xavier for this! He could-” “He won’t,” I snapped angrily. “He can’t. Don’t you see that? The only power he held over Xavier was in keeping his real Order form a secret. Now everyone knows, he’s free. Killing him wouldn’t change the truth. And he can’t very well alienate every Pegasus in Solaria by making his Orderist bullshit public knowledge. He’ll have to let Xavier leave the house, join a herd, fly.” Darius was staring at me like he didn’t know whether to kill me or kiss me and as my gaze fell on his mouth, I found myself aching for the latter. Fuck the stars. (Tory POV)

surrounding the courtyard, an old iron fence quite overgrown with roses. From his study window Reynie might easily have been looking out upon that tree or those flowers, or he might have lifted his gaze to the sky, which on this fine spring morning was a lovely shade of cobalt blue. Instead, he sat at his desk in an attitude of attention, staring at the door, wondering who in the world could be standing on the other side. For a stranger to be lurking in the hallway should have been impossible, given the fact of locked doors, security codes, and a trustworthy guard. Yet Reynie’s ears had detected an unfamiliar tread. His ears were not particularly sharp; indeed, his hearing, like almost everything else about him, was perfectly average: He had average brown eyes and hair, an average fair complexion, an average tendency to sing in the shower, and so on. But when it came to noticing things—noticing things, understanding things, and figuring things out—“average” could hardly describe him. He had been aware, for the last thirty seconds or so, of something different in the house. Preoccupied as he’d been with urgent matters, however, Reynie had given the signs little thought. The shriek and clang of the courtyard gate had raised no suspicions, for not a minute earlier he had spied Captain Plugg, the diligent guard, leaving through that gate to make one of her rounds about the neighborhood. Hearing the sounds again after he’d turned from the window, Reynie had simply assumed the guard forgot something, or was struck by a need for the bathroom. The sudden draft in his study, which always accompanied the opening of the front door downstairs, he had naturally attributed to the return of Captain Plugg as well. He had wondered, vaguely, at the absence of her heavy footsteps below, but his mind had quickly conjured an image of that powerfully built woman taking a seat near the entrance to remove something from her boot. Too quickly, Reynie realized, when he heard that unfamiliar tread in the hallway. And now he sat staring at the door with a great intensity of focus. A knock sounded—a light, tentative tapping—and in an instant Reynie’s apprehension left him. There were people in Stonetown right now who would very much like to hurt him, but this, he could tell, was not one of them. “Come in?” said Reynie, his tone inquisitive.

Almost every day a beautiful woman wearing a ball gown made of grey parachute silk and a broad-brimmed hat trimmed with grey roses visits me. Hardly have I sat down in my armchair, tired from work, but I hear her steps outside on the pavement. She sweeps in at the gate, past the almond tree, and there she is, on the threshold of my workshop. Hastily she comes over to me, like a doctor afraid that she may be too late to save a sinking patient. She takes off her hat and her hair tumbles about her shoulders, she strips off her fencing gloves and tosses them onto this little table, and she bends down towards me. I close my eyes in a swoon – and how it goes on after that point, I do not know. One thing is certain: we never say a word. The scene is always a silent one. I think the grey lady understands only her mother tongue, German, which I have not once spoken since I parted from my parents at Oberwiesenfeld airport in Munich in 1939, and which survives in me as no more than an echo, a muted and incomprehensible murmur. It may possibly have something to do with this loss of language, this oblivion, Ferber went on, that my memories reach no further back than my ninth or eighth year, and that I recall little of the Munich years after 1933 other than processions, marches and parades.

Sandy Ridge is an outdoor holding facility where the Fish and Wildlife Service keeps a few captive red wolves beneath a dense canopy of hardwood trees. Wild wolves are brought here temporarily to recuperate from wounds or sickness. The cabin houses a rotating cadre of barely paid interns, usually students seeking wildlife management experience. They live here for twelve weeks at a time with no potable water, plumbing, or electricity and a stipend of a few hundred dollars a month for groceries. They also get access to a government truck. Given the ruggedness of the surrounding woods, the remoteness of the location, and the lack of communications, access to a truck is a huge selling point - as is working directly with the red wolves. The interns feed the wolves of Sandy Ridge and clean their pens. They also administer medicine to its wild visitors. The current caretaker is taking a rare day off, and one of the red wolf biologists, Ryan Nordsven, is tending the animals this morning. I can’t see the holding pens from the clearing by the cabin, but the woods are so dense, they may be only thirty feet past the tree line and I wouldn’t know. I walk down a dirt road leading from the cabin to the wolf pens. Deer flies dart around my bare legs. As I approach a ten-foot-high chain-link fence, a man waves and opens the gate from the inside. As I pass through, I notice a second chain-link fence about six feet inside the perimeter of the first. “I’m Ryan,” the man says. “So you’re the writer who’s here to learn about red wolves?” “Yes, as much as I can,” I reply. He shakes my hand while holding a shovel in his other hand. Ryan has sandy brown hair, a closely trimmed goatee, and blue eyes set in Scandinavian features. He’s six feet tall, well muscled, and looks like he could wrestle a wolf to the ground with each hand and still have strength left over.

We arrive at Sandy Ridge, and Chris drives the truck through the gate of the double-fenced perimeter. We meet the caretaker, a new intern named Janet. She’s just received a degree from the University of California, Davis. She carts a wheelbarrow to the truck, and Chris hauls the kennel, wolf and all, into it. They tuck a large five-gallon water jug next to the kennel, and then we set off pulling the male down the main thoroughfare that divides the pens of Sandy Ridge. It has rained heavily this fall, and everything from mushrooms to few-days-old kibbles is coated in mold. Chris pauses for a moment and points into the trees at regularly spaced depressions in the ground. “Did you know that this used to be a cemetery?” he asks. We shake our heads. “This is the highest land around,” he says. “It’s a natural ridge, so it was used for graves. There are a few unmarked ones right there.” He points at the depressions where soil has settled and compacted lower than the surrounding areas. “That’s why we don’t have any wolf pens right there.” High land, in the peninsula, usually means an elevation of a few feet above sea level. The unmarked depressions seem a poignant reminder of how man and wolf share the same spaces in this area, whether knowingly or not.

The moment everyone had been anticipating finally came when, at a quarter past nine in the morning on Monday, September 14, 1987, Parker walked up the trail to the pen at the South Lake location where Lucash had been station. In contrast to the media frenzy surrounding the wolves’ arrival in North Carolina, only Parker and four others - Roland Smith, from the Point Defiance Zoo; John Taylor, the Alligator River refuge director; Michael Phillips; and Chris Lucash - were there to witness the release. According to DeBlieu’s writings and Phillips’s field notes, Taylor and Parker walked up the sodden trail to the pen where the wolves sloshed through mud puddles against the far fence. Parker tossed some deer meat into the enclosure, as if it were any other regular feeding. Then he did something entirely different: he secured the gate wide open with a heavy chain. He and Taylor turned and walked back down the trail to rejoin the others at the Boston whaler that had ferried them to the remote spot. Phillips noted that “Parker uttered, ‘We did it. We let them go.’” Parker would reminisce of the moment later in his life that he couldn’t believe he had “scratched something out of the dirt, and it worked.” But after securing the pen door open, and once Parker’s tension dissipated, it was an anticlimactic moment. The wolves did not sense freedom and rush out. Rather, they stayed in their pen for several days, perhaps wary of the open gate. On the fourth morning, the female wandered out and traveled two miles. It took the male a week to move beyond the safe vicinity of the enclosure that had been his small but secure territory. The first two red wolves to be released back to the wild were free. But what would they choose to do with their freedom?