On Keeping the Gate

A gate is a different thing than a fence.

A fence draws a line and leaves it there. It does its work whether you’re watching or not. A gate asks something of the person who uses it. It asks you to slow down. To put a hand where hands have gone before. To decide whether what’s passing through belongs on the other side—or will, if given the chance.

I learned that before I knew it had a name.

Gates were where you stopped the truck. Where dust settled back onto the hood. Where you got out even if you were tired, even if the day had already taken enough out of you. You checked the latch. You looked at the hinges. You made sure the chain hadn’t slipped or the post hadn’t worked loose. You didn’t leave one swinging unless you wanted trouble you were willing to answer for later.

That was the understanding. Nobody had to say it.

Over time, I noticed something. Places that stopped trusting gates did one of two things. They tore them out, or they locked them shut. Both came from the same place—fear disguised as certainty. It’s easier to remove judgment than to practice it. Easier to say always or never than to stand still long enough to decide.

Keeping a gate is work.

It requires presence. It requires a man to be there, not just once, but again and again. It means accepting that no rule will cover every situation, and no system will spare you from responsibility. A gate doesn’t care what you meant to do. It only shows whether you stayed.

That’s why gates fail before fences do. Not because they’re weaker, but because they depend on people.

I’ve seen good places harden when gates were treated like liabilities. When every crossing was assumed a threat. When decisions were made from a distance, by men who never felt the weight of a latch in winter or heard the sound it makes when it doesn’t quite catch. Things stayed orderly for a while. Then they grew brittle. Even the people they were meant to protect stopped recognizing the place they were in.

A good gate doesn’t swing easy. It opens with weight. It closes with intention. It leaves marks where it’s been handled. And when it fails, it fails honestly—because someone wasn’t there to tend it, or stayed away too long.

We don’t lack fences.
We don’t even lack rules.

What we lack is the willingness to stand at the gate and stay long enough for judgment to matter. To accept that deciding costs something. That mistakes will belong to you. That the work doesn’t end once the structure is built.

A fence can be installed and forgotten.
A gate has to be kept.

Most people don’t want that job. It doesn’t come with certainty or credit. It comes with dust on your hands and the knowledge that tomorrow you’ll have to make the same decision again, maybe under worse conditions.

But places worth living in have always depended on that kind of work. Quiet work. Human work. The kind that doesn’t announce itself unless it stops.

I still slow down at gates, even when I don’t need to. Old habits. Old understandings. I check the latch. I listen for the sound it makes when it settles right. And I close it behind me—not because I’m afraid of what might come through, but because I plan to be back, and I want to recognize the place when I return.

— Hank Redding