I was surprised by the emotions that I felt. They were a mixture of sadness, happiness and nostalgia. After we took the gate down and set it aside, I kept staring at it beneath the pile of worn and broken gateposts and barbed wire. I thought about how many times my hands had run across its rusty patina in the cold gray light just before dawn or the blackening gloam in the last light of evening.

Throughout the day as we worked, I would catch myself staring at it, all the while envisioning the hands that I knew had held it and the untold other hands that I had not known. “I should save it,” I thought, “Repurpose it.”

At lunch, I took a break to eat with G and Tate, and while we ate, I updated them on our progress that morning. We were replacing the old gate at the main entrance to the tree farm along with a section of fence that had fallen victim to overgrowth and fallen trees.

“I want that gate. We could use it for our barn,” G said. I smiled as I told her that I had envisioned the same. “Just think about all the hands that have touched it,” she added, and I told her that I had been doing just that.

As we drove over to retrieve the gate, which had received a reprieve from the scrap yard, we talked about her dad and her grandad and how many hundreds of times their hands had held it. It was a rusted relic of the past, connecting us with memories of those we had lost, and now it would become a part of our future as well.

That afternoon, we both kept thinking about the gate and the memories that lay behind it. For Gena, the gate was the entryway to what was called “the Pasture.” Her grandfather kept horses and cattle there, and she recounted the memories of riding the horses there with her sister and family.

The pasture is now a pine plantation, but it still contains remnants of those times if you know where to look. A few posts from the old cattle catch pen that was once the center of the pasture still remain amidst the pines and thickets.

We had hoped at one point to use one of the weathered posts from the catch pen as a mantle for our fireplace, but time and the elements had done their work, and the posts were too far gone for that purpose. However, they still remain at the site dutifully fulfilling their role as lichen-covered memory markers.

I recalled my first trip through the gate. G’s dad was taking me on a tour of the farm for the first time. I remember looking into the old-growth hardwoods and pines as we drove wondering what it must have been like to hunt those hills and hollers.

G and I had just started dating then, and I didn’t yet know the attachment that I would one day have for the land and for this place, but even then, it had a special feel. Over the years, the stories that my father-in-law shared with me about hunting and fishing there began to intermingle with the stories of the two of us hunting those woods.

My hands held that rusted gate more and more, and as time passed, so did the hands of my daughter, a brother (some say brother-in-law, I’ll stick with brother), my son, my nephew and my niece. With each passing year, I felt what I have referred to before as the “pull of the place” grow stronger and stronger.

The feeling is, for me, similar to that felt by the character App Worster in James Galvin’s novel “The Meadow.” In describing what App felt for the meadow on Sheep Creek, he said, “It was a feeling like he belonged there… It was as though he had a tuning fork vibrating in his chest when he thought about it.”

I felt those vibrations this weekend when I held that gate in my hands, when I helped string the barbed wire for the fence and when I gripped the slick, shiny red paint of the new gate.

I understand now that fences and gates contain so much more than land, wildlife or livestock. Behind those fences and gates is a treasure trove of memories both realized and waiting to happen. I don’t think I’ll ever look at a gate the same way again.

Open a few gates of your own this week, make a few memories or just enjoy those you have already made, and until next time, I look forward to seeing you out there in our great outdoors.

Email outdoors columnist Brad Dye at braddye@comcast.net.