Hard Country

Aug 20 12015

The abandoned house,

broken windows

like blackened eyes.

Its out-buildings nearly collapsed;

log walls, angled this-way-and-that,

sagging roofs

like sway-backed horses.

Inside, it was dank and dark,

broken glass

clinked on the floors.

Emerging 
from the cool gloom of the forest

I was caught by surprise;

a sun-drenched clearing, hacked from the woods,

where homesteaders had tried

to start a life.

It was the stillness

that struck me most.

As if time moved more slowly here,

measured by seasons, and years.

Or had entirely stopped;

with everything left

just as it was,

as if they had only stepped out

for a moment or two

and would soon return.

This is hard country to farm.

Thin soil

with its crop of rocks, and broken dreams.

A late spring, and fickle summer

the comes with hail

its share of grief.

But now, it was flourishing;

waist-high weeds, seeding themselves,

wildflowers, arresting the eye

like unexpected gems.

Because nature inexorably reclaims.

Wood rots

land subsides

garden plants run wild.

Roots heave, and colonize.

And trees grow unstoppably,

pushing through roofs, toppling walls.

Even steel crumbles

brittle with rust.

I had taken a rough path

through the backwoods

and stumbled upon this accidental place,

only to find myself blind-sided

by such deep feeling.

Touched

by those long-ago-people

full of stoic hope,

by this frozen tableau

of neglect, and abandon.

And where I couldn’t help but think

how the footprint of man

is so evanescent,

despite our swagger, and pride.

I could easily imagine

the white walls

and bright red trim

before they faded and flaked.

The patch of grass

where children must once have played.

The border of marigolds

that someone tended so lovingly

when there was work to be done.

Before the wall of thorns, and tangled brush

ran rampant through the yard.

 I’m pretty sure I wrote about this before. (But it’s way back in the archives, and I haven’t bothered to check it out.) The dog and I were out for a hike, and ended up exploring this path.

Actually, things were not left as if they had just stepped out:  the house had been pretty much emptied. I found the little shed fascinating. It was chock-a-block with old newspapers and vintage magazines, which I spent too long thumbing through.  There was also some rusting machinery, abandoned furniture, broken farm implements. And overgrown weed-infested fields, of course.

What recalled this memory for me was reading a short essay about a trip to Angkor Wat, and the writer’s description of the trees growing amidst the buildings, the green jungle invading. She nicely evoked the choking fecundity and slowly crumbling structures in that hot humid place. She had me recalling this other place I had seen, where nature was also reclaiming from man. And as I recalled, I couldn’t help but think of the hard life they had led, the struggle eventually abandoned.