Let me tell you what you see here. It is a steel post I slammed into the middle of the stream bed. I (or #1 Son) put it there a couple of years ago. This is along my southern property line, the half of it that is not fenced. That quarter-mile stretch is the only bit of property line I have that is not clearly and obviously defined. I've spoken of this before. More than once, I'm sure. Tediously, even. Over the years we've made efforts to define this line, and once we thought we had it figured out, we placed posts along where we thought it ran then tied orange and yellow survey tape to them so they'd be obvious to anyone walking the woods. I don't assert that this is exactly where the legal line runs; it is merely my attempt to show good faith at estimating the line. (After the incident of timber trespass at my other bit of forest in the Missouri Ozarks, I've been nervous about ill-defined property lines.) When we had last checked the records in the courthouse, someone who lived in some place called "California" owned the forty acres on the other side of this line. However, when Good Neighbor Tom and his brother Good Neighbor Fred were by visiting last fall, they mentioned that the daughter and son-in-law of one of them had bought that piece of land. I quickly stated that my posts were not intended to be the legal definition of where the line ran but merely the approximation I described above. They said that whatever it was, it was a good estimation to them. They thought the line of posts must have been very close to the real line. What do I make of this? If they had the property surveyed, as is prudent (though expensive) when buying land, they would know exactly where the line ran. (There was some fresh survey tape on my SW corner last spring, some that I hadn't put there, and that could suggest that a surveyor had been by. But that was also the time when Good Neighbor Brian had the ill-conceived notion of selling his property, so the survey might have been for that land rather than the other. The two pieces touch corners at my SW corner.) If they did know where the line ran, would their quick agreement with my statement suggest I was right about the post placement? Or could it be that I was generous about it, "giving" my neighbors to the south more land than the surveyor did? It's a rough stretch of land. There is no marketable timber there. No minerals to be extracted. No potential home sites. I suspect this area where the two properties meet will remain forever wild, and from what I can see of Good Neighbor Tom and Good Neighbor Fred, we share similar interests toward our property. I feel safe that there won't be any incidents along this line. Still, it's nice to have the posts there. What's also interesting about this photo is that there is actual, running water in that stream bed. All of that was melting slow and perhaps water in the topsoil that was released when the temperature rose above freezing for several days. Missouri calendar:

• Maple sap flows best now; freezing nights and thawing days cause change.

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