tween_the_banks
Senior Member
My wife is the photographer of our little family but I like to be her pilot. Sometimes I intentionally get us lost in hopes of finding a new pasture so sick with heart colored thistle that we would dive from the tar coated fence posts like bullfrogs if we didn't know any better. On this outing, however, I took her down more familiar roads. I knew of an abandoned farm house that sits on a bank owned 80 acres on a rise the looks over a swamp. The same realty sign is still posted in the side yard from when I first stepped foot on the property when I was a wild haired pre-teen with a cheap zebco bouncing on my shoulder, a piece of saw grass in my teeth and a can of worms in my hand. The faces of the realtors are gone from that sign now, however. It's as if the bugs and the uncontrollable whims of the weather did away with the smiling outsiders and left their polished suits headless. That, or one of the few folks who live on the road or drive it everyday grew as tired as the environment and pulled over on their way home or on their way to work and carved around the faces with a key, a knife, whatever the car had to offer and banished the strangers for good.
When we pulled into the grass covered gravel I sensed her excitement. To our right was a long stretch of field that was overrun with various weeds. To our left was the farm house. A lonely broken window stared at us through the encroaching growth of small trees and polk salad. Her hands began adjusting her camera while her eyes were scanning brightly this new place. We wandered through the old building. The outside world was quiet. A quiet that only the country can know. And other than the rubbings of vegetation against the tin above the only noises was our shared breathing and her camera clicking as it focused on the otherwise forgotten dregs of the south. We traced an old watering hole at a blooming pace. It was years without cow or horse track. I remarked that the drought had killed all the fish but that the frogs seemed to be thriving. Tadpoles darted from the edge of the bank as we circled. Their rippled V's on the surface told our coming.
From there we cut a trail through a fenced patch of high grass. I told her to keep her eyes at her feet. In the spring, doe will leave their fawns in these places of neglect and one can nearly step on the babies before they'll dart away or bleat out for help. I remember thinking of the dichotomy between man and the wilder beasts as we stepped high through the grass. Such a wavering, fleeting thing is human instinct. Regardless, it seemed to be a fawnless stretch of ground and we separated as we approached the backside of the old barn.
The first thing I saw after the split was a ladder that led to a dark and dusty hay loft. There was a nostalgia that ran the wood grain of each step. It was a ladder leaned against yesterday. Probably constructed from otherwise useless scrap pieces left over from the barn's building. It seemed to say in aged, angled words In my time, waste was a sin, boy. It was as man-made as a baby or our inadequate words.The rails had been worn smooth from calloused hands and the ancient dirt left long ago from farm hands still lingered like a muddy creek running into a pristine river. Faint smear of the last working America. I see you there, and may you rest well, my thoughts echoed into the darkness.
I must have been in the loft longer than it had seemed because eventually I heard my wife's calling. "Zach, where are you?" She didn't sound scared but there was a lack of comfort in her words. "I'm up here." I said. I helped her up the broken and questionable ladder and we took many photos in the dusty, tricky light. The majority of the floor was hay covered and it was hard to distinguish where the boards ran true and where great holes lay hidden. She eventually grew dizzy from the height and the potential danger of it al around the time a truck rolled by slowly, almost stopping. As I peeked through a busy crack of light that was blurred with millions of dust particles that seemed to mimic falling stars and exploding suns, I saw the truck finally gain speed and round the curve out of sight.
"He's gone." I said to my wife's worried face.
"I think we need to go to." She said.
"Okay hun, at least we got some good pictures."
When we pulled into the grass covered gravel I sensed her excitement. To our right was a long stretch of field that was overrun with various weeds. To our left was the farm house. A lonely broken window stared at us through the encroaching growth of small trees and polk salad. Her hands began adjusting her camera while her eyes were scanning brightly this new place. We wandered through the old building. The outside world was quiet. A quiet that only the country can know. And other than the rubbings of vegetation against the tin above the only noises was our shared breathing and her camera clicking as it focused on the otherwise forgotten dregs of the south. We traced an old watering hole at a blooming pace. It was years without cow or horse track. I remarked that the drought had killed all the fish but that the frogs seemed to be thriving. Tadpoles darted from the edge of the bank as we circled. Their rippled V's on the surface told our coming.
From there we cut a trail through a fenced patch of high grass. I told her to keep her eyes at her feet. In the spring, doe will leave their fawns in these places of neglect and one can nearly step on the babies before they'll dart away or bleat out for help. I remember thinking of the dichotomy between man and the wilder beasts as we stepped high through the grass. Such a wavering, fleeting thing is human instinct. Regardless, it seemed to be a fawnless stretch of ground and we separated as we approached the backside of the old barn.
The first thing I saw after the split was a ladder that led to a dark and dusty hay loft. There was a nostalgia that ran the wood grain of each step. It was a ladder leaned against yesterday. Probably constructed from otherwise useless scrap pieces left over from the barn's building. It seemed to say in aged, angled words In my time, waste was a sin, boy. It was as man-made as a baby or our inadequate words.The rails had been worn smooth from calloused hands and the ancient dirt left long ago from farm hands still lingered like a muddy creek running into a pristine river. Faint smear of the last working America. I see you there, and may you rest well, my thoughts echoed into the darkness.
I must have been in the loft longer than it had seemed because eventually I heard my wife's calling. "Zach, where are you?" She didn't sound scared but there was a lack of comfort in her words. "I'm up here." I said. I helped her up the broken and questionable ladder and we took many photos in the dusty, tricky light. The majority of the floor was hay covered and it was hard to distinguish where the boards ran true and where great holes lay hidden. She eventually grew dizzy from the height and the potential danger of it al around the time a truck rolled by slowly, almost stopping. As I peeked through a busy crack of light that was blurred with millions of dust particles that seemed to mimic falling stars and exploding suns, I saw the truck finally gain speed and round the curve out of sight.
"He's gone." I said to my wife's worried face.
"I think we need to go to." She said.
"Okay hun, at least we got some good pictures."
