It is just a red line.

A line on a computer screen, where delicately tuned charged particles are aimed by precise electromagnets to fluoresce only the tiny red pixels. A line a mere three pixels wide.

It took me several hours to create that line. More, if you count the attempt made "without reading the manual."

As I sat here just now, staring at all the colored dots I have caused to appear in precise locations within and around that red line, I noticed part of it was in the wrong place.

It's fixed, now.

Not that I need be embarrassed about that. That red line represents a fence, and it seems I am one of only a few people who actually know where it really lies.

The official map from our outfit has it wrong in several places. The digitized version from the federal government is even worse, off by more than a quarter-mile in many lengths.

I know this fence well.

It is one of my least favorite places in my part of the planet.

The fence represented by that red line went to District Court, and I went too, as a potential rebuttal witness.

Never called to testify, mind you, but it was an education.

That red line went on to Circuit Court, and finally the U.S. Supreme Court.

And then it came back to me. I remember a crowded room, filled with all the affected parties. Literally each and every one of them represented by an attorney.

Except me.

And we changed that line. Not where it lay, but what it was.

Now, I look at that diagonal segment of line, one of the parts almost everybody else maps wrong, and I remember a December helicopter ride out to the lip of that cliff, so we could freeze our fingers working on that fence. Before boarding the chopper to land five miles away and do it again.

I remember that as the first, but not last, time I was wrongly quoted by a newspaper. From an interview that took place on that five-mile helicopter ride.

There, where the red line crosses that one draw by a gate?

That's another freezing winter afternoon of another winter, where I violated instructions from my boss, the Governor, and a judge. And nearly froze our toddling, eldest son to death in the process.

And, as a consequence, one local cowboy has been friendly and courteous ever since.

There, that dot along the west line?

Five years ago I killed her.

That other dot, to the south? That was almost exactly a year ago. I had a broken wrist when I clambered over that fence yet again.

And another elk died.

Well, you get the point. No need to dig up those memories. But it all comes back this evening.

Looking at a red line.