This was first published November 13, 2015.
I tried to finish up my studio movie, surrendering my artistic attempt at including side by side pictures of before/durings/and afters. You get just a simple movie… as soon as it decides to load… which looks like early morning.
Gah!
So, let’s return to the past few days…
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A hike, a dog, landscapes… and half a mile away… civilization.
A two room cabin sits quietly, the breeze sifting through window frames, glass long gone. The open roof, with sky for shingles, captures blue in its maze of rafters. I lean in the green door, faded, crooked, open to whatever creature can fit between the narrow boards. In the front room, a metal bedframe, coils only, lays on the floor, resting, rusting. Corner shelves hold a pack rat nest, full of prickly pear cactus to ward off unsuspecting visitors. Floorboards look too rotten to hold my weight and so I circle the logs, peering in windows, enthralled by the whispers of history.
The second room was the kitchen, a cupboard with doors sits proudly, though wrinkled, in the corner. Two tables, a bench, more shelves line the walls. Never have I seen so many built in shelves in a simple log cabin before. So far from town, did they hold supplies of tin cans, or canning jars… barrels of flour and sugar… or what I dream of… well-worn books, poetry to commit to memory, history, Latin musings of Marcus Aurelius, Shakespeare, or a Bible… its front pages filled with the births and marriages and deaths of a family.
A family who dreamed, who suffered, who worked day and night because there was a Chance. A chance to live the way they chose, far from family and home. When the winter winds howled, a fire would be built, blazing against the freezing cold, book in hand, sitting at the table, reading by a coal oil lamp, and smiling because this was all they desired. Their own tiny bit of civilization, surrounded by prairie and dreams, where shingles of sky would someday whisper their tale.
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If my computer would cooperate, I have photos… but part of me hopes your imagination is just as good.
Find me here!
If you are a reader you have that imagination. Isn’t it great.
It is.