When I was growing up, a popular song in our part of the world was Mickey Mac Connell's Only Our Rivers Run Free. Although not explicitly mentioned, the Border loomed large in its lyrics, which yearned for Irish reunification.
But the composer expressed his pessimism on this score in poetic terms, viz: "When apples still grow in November/ When blossoms still bloom from each tree/ When leaves are still green in December/ It's then that our land will be free." We know now, of course, that most of the song's metaphorical aspirations have been achieved in the intervening years, thanks to a combination of global warming and reduced international transport costs.
Apples do now grow in November, and every other month of the year. Strawberries too, it seems. Leaves are still green in January, even. Not only do blossoms bloom to an unprecedented extent, so do new and harmful forms of algae. Animal life is also affected. Exotic marine species keep turning up in the sea off Kerry - the county where Mickey Mac Connell now lives - apparently convinced this is Africa.
As for our rivers, if they were free when the song was written, they're even freer now. Canals have caught the mood as well. Waterways Ireland is one of the North-South implementation bodies set up under the Good Friday Agreement. And among its projects is the reopening of the Ulster Canal, which will soon make it possible to travel by water, inland, from Dublin to Coleraine.
The only thing in this brave new world that hasn't changed, ironically, is the Border. So I was amused by a call in the latest edition of A Note From The Next-Door Neighbours, the Armagh-based publication edited by my former Irish Times colleague Andy Pollak. He makes his proposal in an editorial, suggesting, in short - and apologising for any apparent contradiction - that it may be time to put the Border "back on the map".
As befits the director of the Centre for Cross-Border Studies, Andy does have a serious point. Which is that, insofar as it gets any press at all, the Border region gets only a bad one. This is despite the many people on both sides working heroically to promote co-operation - people who know that, regardless of the competing views about its existence, the Border is not going to disappear this year or next and that, in the meantime, the success of the region is in everyone's interest.
Then we come to the most challenging concept in the article. Namely that Ireland should set the year 2021 - the centenary of partition - as a target date for creating "the most dynamic border region in Europe". This would require seeing off competition from the likes of the Dutch-German Euregios and the Franco-German Upper Rhine region - including the once vexed Alsace-Lorraine, which used to change hands every other war.
In the meantime, Andy already has a few slogans for a campaign to attract the necessary investment, tourism, and economic migration. His suggestions include "Border Means Business", "Border People Think Outside the Box", and yes, even "Border is Beautiful".
It must be said that, by global standards, the Irish Border is hardly a border at all. Since the Berlin Wall fell, the starkest example of the genre is the one dividing North and South Korea, which follows a line of latitude, is fenced, land-mined, and almost impossible to cross (alive anyway). The Korean border is also the focus of a constant propaganda war which used to include a competition to have the world's largest flag, until the South sensibly gave up - by which stage the north's version was 30 metres long, flew on a 160-metre high pole, and weighed 600 lbs.
Contrast this with the gently meandering and now almost unmarked Irish Border. On the short drive from Clones, Co Monaghan to Belturbet, Co Cavan, you may cross an international frontier four times without noticing. So clearly we have a head start in establishing our Border as the model for global best practice. Dynamism, Upper Rhine-style, will be a bigger challenge.
Andy Pollak does not underestimate the difficulties involved. "I know that one half of Border society wants rid of the Border and the other sees it as the guarantee of its safety and identity," he writes. "But maybe those who want to see it gone can be pragmatic enough to accept that it is here to stay for the foreseeable future, and those who need it to stay can understand that to make it less threatening through greater cross-Border contact, dialogue, and even mutual celebration can only be a good thing."
Despite all its problems, the Border region is rich in entrepreneurs. For every hardliner, there are two pragmatists, people who believe in getting on with things and turning lemons into lemon juice, with or without a grant. Currently, their attitude is mirrored at the top in Northern Ireland. If Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness can paddle the same canoe in opposite directions without sinking it (so far), surely anything is possible.
An example of the immediate practical problems facing the region, I suggest, is a change in public attitudes to the poultry industry. Border counties on both sides dominate the island's egg and poultry-meat production. But consumer taste is fast evolving. The question now is whether producers can rise to the challenge and ensure that soon, like our rivers, our chickens will run free too.