Show Up and Work Hard: The North Fence and the Heart of a Warrior – There are summer days in the Dakotas when the sun doesn’t rise—it strikes. Hard. Clean. Unforgiving as a drill sergeant with no coffee and no patience for excuses.
That was the kind of morning I found myself standing beside Pop, staring at a stretch of broken fence that went from the box canyon up and over Red Tail Ridge and down to French Creek. Hell, to me, it might as well have reached Canada. Time, and that freight train of a storm that had blown through the valley the week prior, ripped cedar posts from the ground like they were dandelions and left barbed wire coiled in the dirt like angry snakes.
I was ten years old, elbows too sharp for my sleeves, voice still shaky with childhood. Pop handed me a post maul that felt like it weighed more than I did. “Sun’s coming,” he said. “And she ain’t gonna take pity on us today.” We rode out in his old Chevy flatbed that rattled like every bolt in it had a complaint. One high beam was lighting the cattle trail we were on, and Cedar posts were stacked in the back. Spools of wire. Water jug in the shade of a wet feed sack. By the time we stopped, the eastern sky was beginin’ to turn blue.
“No shortcuts,” Pop said. “A fence only stands as straight as the hands that build it. We do it right, or we can keep redoin’ it. Understand?”
The First Swing
I swung the maul. It bounced off the post and nearly took me with it. My arms buzzed like they had fallen asleep, and my teeth even rattled. Pop didn’t laugh. Didn’t scold. He adjusted his hat brim and said, “Don’t fight the weight. Work with it. Tools need to be learned and then mastered. The tool doesn’t make it happen; the man on the handle does.”
By the fifth post, my palms burned. By the tenth, my shoulders trembled. By the twentieth, the dust on my tongue tasted like defeat. I wanted to quit. To get some water, sit in the shade and wait for… something easier. Yet my old man wasn’t a quitter, and he sure as hell didn’t raise his boys to be.
Just as the quit started to rise in me, he said as he worked, “Pain means you’re learning,” driving a post so smooth it looked effortless. “And every blister is proof of a lesson earned. You keep learnin’, with every swing, and one day it won’t hurt.”
Funny thing—I didn’t feel punished or belittled. I felt… becoming. Like the land itself, and his simple wisdom, if I listened, was shaping me to be a man he wanted to work with, one strike at a time.
The Lesson Hidden in the Heat
We hit one hundred posts just as the day fell into copper dusk. I sat on that scratched and dented old tailgate, shirt soaked, hands raw, and arms trembling. Filled with the unfamiliar weight of accomplishment. He cracked open two cold sodas, handed one to me, and touched his to mine, just like he did with his buddies. “You worked like a man today,” he said. Not a parade, no long speech, just seven words.
That fence still stands out there, weathered and gray. The wire’s been tightened since, corners re-braced, and a post replaced here and there—just like a life lived long and honest. But the bones of that line are mine. And every time I ride past it, I recall something important:
The hardest days build the strongest parts of us.
Reframing: The Quiet Strength Behind the Lesson
I didn’t know it then, but Pop was teaching me an NLP technique called reframing—shifting the meaning of a challenge so it becomes a source of fuel rather than a burden. The memories of that day could have been a story about pain, exhaustion, and heatstroke. Instead, it became the day I learned I could do hard things.
Reframing doesn’t erase struggle—it redeems it. It says, “This didn’t happen to me. It happened for me.” And that’s where growth begins.
For Those Who Serve
If you’ve ever worn a uniform—Army green, Marine dress blues, a badge, bunker gear, or medic whites—you know the heat of a day like that. Yet your fence wasn’t barbed wire. It might have been a battlefield, a burning house, a dark alley, or a hospital floor at 3 a.m. with alarms screaming and adrenaline pounding through your veins like a second heartbeat.
You carried a weight most will never understand.
You swung your maul in places the world never sees.
And sometimes the storm didn’t just hit the land—it hit you.
Now you stand in a quieter field, amongst us, and the silence can feel heavier than the fight ever did. Some days you see the broken posts in your own life—losses, regrets, and memories sharpened by time.
But brother, sister—hear this:
Your scars are not signs of weakness. They are proof YOU kept standing.
And now, your mission is not to forget the past—but to reframe it.
- Every moment you hurt? Proof you cared.
- Every night, you fought sleep? Proof you stayed vigilant.
- Every memory that stings? Proof you lived through your hell and walked out the other side. Not broken… Tempered.
Your Fence Line Starts Today.
When life feels heavy, ask yourself:
- What is this trying to teach me? How can I grow from this moment?
- What proof of strength does this pain hold?
Then swing your maul.
- One post at a time.
- One breath at a time.
- One sunrise at a time.
The fence line doesn’t get built in a day. Yet neither does a warrior.
Ride Forward—Your Call to Action
If this story stirred something in you—a memory, a scar, a spark—don’t let it fade.
Take one step today:
- Walk a quiet trail.
- Write one page about what you survived.
- Call a buddy you served with and check on him.
- Help a stranger, like you once helped a teammate.
- Join other warriors growing forward, not looking back.
- Or simply put your hand over your heart and say, “I didn’t come this far to stop here.”
I invite you to join other veterans and first responders walking this path of Post-Traumatic Growth — reclaiming who we are and who we’re becoming now. You will always have a fence to build, remember; like your time in service, you don’t build it alone.
Keep riding.
Keep building.
Pain is proof you’re still growing.
Strength, Courage, Actions, Resilience
“Strength isn’t built in comfort—it’s forged in the heat, one swing, one scar, one sunrise at a time.”
– Scott Gates
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