Nothing lasts forever or so they say. Wanna prove this concept? Just start doing some home improvements. I mean by yourself. Wow. Put on a coat of paint and let the clock tick away. Before you know it those lovely old windows that you trimmed are cracked and peeling, the decks you stained have faded and even hard wood posts which looked solid have weathered cracked and now look iffy. What's a weekend home depot warrior to do?
But the really scary part is you can extrapolate this process to just about everything on God's green earth, including and especially YOURSELF! Even entire species get wiped out as a part of mother nature's spring cleaning. Now there's a woman who knows how to toss stuff.
Today's essay will hone in on one of her often overlooked casualties but we can't pin this on Mother N alone as man has had a neglectful hand. I speak of our nation's historic barns, many of which crumple in decay across the center of this great land.
More than a handful of road trips of late have taken me across the nation's midland. From the interstates you can't see much other than the duplicate strip foods and gas mother ship landing stations. But in that little window of America that you can see from the road is the startling sight of barn after barn after wood barn abandoned, perforated and sagging. A once proud symbol of the pioneer ancestor's prosperity is now left to return to dust on farms that one presumes may now be in the hands of agricultural corporations.
A common sight is a cement silo standing proudly without it's partner. Another is a wooden outbuilding with a broken back silhouetted across the evening skyline. Still more common is an old grey shell with some remaining boards, no longer much of an obstacle to prairie winds.
I am not sure why this bothers me but it does. Perhaps it marks a change in our food production from family farms to conglomoculture. Perhaps it is just that it is an aesthetic shame. Perhaps it is just a reminder that we and all we create are temporary.
I throw this out for you to ponder. Anything that makes enough impact for one to exit the freeway to get a picture for a future blog must have some significance. I share and wonder why I have been affected by these sights. Evidently I am not alone. From one barn remnant in Michigan hung a sign shouting "Save the Barns" at passers-by and pointing to this website ...
www.mibarn.net
I did not have the energy to exit and photograph that one. I can't help but wonder why.
