Over a century old, a barn barely reveals its former function. Too dangerous to enter any more, I circle around it, remembering how I learned to drive on the old red Jeep, used to climb the rafters to jump down on old straw and manure, where I first saw a cow being milked. Most of the old apple orchards have died away, most of the farm implements are reduced to skeletal axles and wheels. Just yards away lie the bones of previous people connected with this land, including the homesteader himself, I'm told. This place has been part of me for all of my life, and even I must learn to let go. We are just here for a short while, in all our busy aspirations and worries, but the Earth abides.
5 comments:
Your words together with these photos are very convincing.
You are lucky to have had a barn.
Thanks Dina. I feel lucky to have had a childhood that included both city and country experiences and perspectives.
Lucky, yes, but I don't like to think that you have to let go of a place that's been part of you all your life.
P, I've had to let go of what it used to be. As a kid, I thought it would never change, and here it is half a century later, so different in so many ways. It used to break my heart to see the changes.
I see what you mean. It's too bad you can't go into the barn anymore. But there's a beautiful kind of entropy going on.
I spent a good deal of my childhood visiting a particular farm at the edge of my neighborhood. I raised two horses there. My friend died there. It's all condos now. Something I should write about, I guess. It's all memory.
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