LONELY HOUSES AND FARMS
“ The wooden houses wait like old wives along this road;
they are everywhere, abandoned, leaning, turning gray."
- from the poem, Scenic Road, by Lisel Mueller
I brake for old, dilapidated houses, especially those standing alone, looking forlorn. They clearly have history, but it is history now silent. The shingled house with the garage sits in the Bruce Peninsula, across the street from a newer house where the family now lives. There is nothing of the new house that interests me. Rather, what beckons me is the faded color, the frayed shingles, the worn roof, the empty windows. These houses and barns and orchards symbolize what used to be. They call to mind families, work, children growing up. Crops, gardens, farm animals. Other eras. I have learned to trespass lightly, and to ask permission when it seems prudent, in order to record these images.