Fences have an image problem. They signify self-containment and exclusiveness. They’re the antithesis of hospitality and openness. Fences say: “Keep Out.” They express the anti-social and possessive aspects of our nature.

Stockade fences enclosing suburban backyards are emblems of isolation, of an obsession with privacy — repudiations of the front porch culture of friendlier, more communal times. Fences are instruments of separation and dividing up what ought to be whole.

When buffalo roamed the open range, America was Paradise and the country was free. Indians mounted on ponies rejoiced in the unencumbered wilderness. But the white man dreamed of metes and bounds. He clung to the clock and the yardstick. His mind was divided into hemispheres: assets and liabilities. Nature was property: mine versus yours. He was a numbers man, a cattle man. Out of his mind reeled millions of miles of fence.

In 1874, Joseph Glidden of De Kalb, Illinois, invented a machine to make barbed wire. By 1890, the Western range had almost entirely been fenced in.

The frontier was closed. The country’s youth had passed.

On July 25, 1944, Bing Crosby recorded a Cole Porter song that sold more than a million copies and topped the Billboard charts for 8 weeks. It goes: “I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences/ and gaze at the moon till I lose my senses/And I can’t look at hovels and I can’t stand fences/Don’t fence me in.” I know of no lyrical rebuttal to that song, no rival paean that proclaims the virtues of fence. When I lived in town, I had the back yard fenced to make a pen for my dogs. Compared to their kennels, the space was vast. But the first thing they did when I let them out was to run along the fence line, looking for escape. The entire state of Kansas would seem like a prison to them if its borders were fenced.

A “fence” is a receiver of stolen goods. A “fence-sitter” is an irresolute person. As Robert Frost wrote, “Something there is that doesn’t like a fence.”

And yet I have a good word to say for these paragons of imprisonment and ill-will. Some years ago, I paid a man to fence part of a farm to keep the cattle out and let nature to do its own thing. At once, that small space assumed a new identity that distinguished it from the rest of the farm. It was a sanctuary. When you opened the gate, you entered a domain that hadn’t existed before.

Without cattle grazing, the native grasses grew to full glory, topped with luxuriant heads of seed. The evidence of domestic intrusion — cow flops, hoof prints gouged in the soil — soon disappeared. The little creek and the woods it ran through acquired personality. They seemed re-created, pristine. It was a bit of magic, thanks to a fence.

By the way, the first bidder on that fence project began his pitch with the statement, “Now, George, I’ll be honest with you.” Why does that pronouncement cause instant mistrust? The second bidder told me that his current employer was mad at him, “Because I never show up.” On the strength of that frank confession, I awarded him the job.

He built a dandy fence. But I was left without a sense of accomplishment. I had no part in it. I suspected my neighbors would judge me harshly. You can’t expect to be taken as a serious country person if you pay others to do your work. An imperative possessed me: I must build a fence myself. Mastering the art would earn me my stripes.

The prospect intimidated me. My first fence sagged and wavered. It might as well have been a lace curtain for all it could keep in or out. I consulted the Internet. I spoke to experts. I bought a book. “A fence is only as good as its corner posts and braces,” I read. To be “hog tight,” a fence must be stretched. If the posts aren’t sound, stretching will pull the entire structure out.

Nothing is as easy as it sounds on the printed page. I soon found out that a coil of 9 gauge wire can become a wild serpent or a bucking bronco when released from its bindings, squirming, leaping, twisting — anything to resist being tamed. An overstretched run of wire can snap and come flying back. “Unwinding a snarl of barbed wire from around your neck can be a real headache — if your head is still on, that is,” according to my book.

Don’t turn your back on an unrolled roll of woven wire. It will rewind itself and chase after you with malevolent intent. Beware of the “come along,” a handle-operated ratchet-wheel used for stretching wire. It bites down like a snapping turtle. I’ve had to use a sledge hammer to make it let go.

When I stepped back to admire my demonstration fence I suddenly realized that I’d enclosed an area that didn’t need to be fenced. Nevertheless, my neighbor said that I’d done it right. I got more satisfaction from that accolade than from my college degree.

“When you build a fence, you are drawing firm lines around the portion of this lovely green-and-blue planet that you choose to call your own,” writes the author of my fence book. Is that a crime, I ask.

As to the observation that, “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence,” I have studied it carefully from every angle and concluded that, if there is any difference, it is slight.

— George Gurley, who lives in rural Baldwin, writes a regular column for the Journal-World.