The Forest Service supervisor came on the line and said, Mrs Greene, that marker number is a federal survey monument. If it says what I think it says, your neighbor does not own your top ten acres. He owes you an apology, and maybe a fence.
Dewey planted a Fraser fir the year we married, at the very top of the ridge, and he told me once there was something buried at her feet for the day somebody tried to move our fence. Under that tree was a granite survey marker with a brass cap, set by the government in 1975, and with it a Forest Service letter and a map.
The brass monument was the true corner. And the true line did not favor my neighbor at all. The old fence he claimed was in the wrong place had actually been giving him a strip of my land for years, not the other way around. His survey was wishful. The federal monument Dewey had protected all this time settled it beyond argument.
He told me these trees are coming down. He did not know the true corner of my mountain was marked in brass and buried under the oldest tree my husband ever planted.
The Forest Service sent someone to confirm the monument. Once the real line was on paper with a federal seal, my neighbors lawyer stopped returning his calls. There was no wholesale cut in November. There was no spending the rest of my life in court. There was a surveyor putting the fence back where 1975 said it belonged, a little onto his side.
I kept the choose-and-cut shed open with my grandson, and families came for hot cider by Deweys wood stove again this December.
On Christmas Eve I walked up to the top of the ridge, to the fir Dewey planted the year we married, the one he never sold, and I stood under her alone the way he used to. I told her thank you. She kept our corner safe, just like he said she would.