dreams – Wonderer of Nature

If you follow a minor dirt road not far from here, which leaves the main road to reach some farms further in, you will pass a house that is left to sleep so deep that soon I think no one will be able to kiss it awake. Lilacs grow over the wide stonehege, which also make up part of a root cellar. Old beeches strech their heavy branches over the narrow road. Beauty for all senses.

About 35 years ago there lived a joyful farmer there who managed this little farm meticulously, in a friendly manner. But old age at last got the better of him and he left this life for the eternal one. A cousin of his inherited the house, but she didn’t care for it, nor the farm, just the idea of owning a property. She has never visited it, just left it there. Nature has slowly made the garden into a small charming wilderness.

During my whole life I have watched how the seedlings that took root by the walls of the house, slowly have grown into trees, how the smaller barn with wooden roof at last collapsed and returned to the earth it was made from. Many times I have stopped there dreaming to restore it to that neat little fram it once was. But there is a fascination of the forgotten one with hidden memories. However, when I passed this time I could not resist entering through the one gate that is still hanging on its hinges.

I sat down in the grass among the old apple trees in the meadow of red and yellow primroses. Nothing disturbed the peace and quiet of the garden. I did not feel as an intruder, more of a guest taking part of a flowers feast.

I wonder if anyone will ever live in that house again, call it a home, sit where I sat admiring the flowers, but not as a guest but considering this place as part of their life. What a happy owner it would be.

There is something wondrous about inhabited farms, even though the fields are cultivated and cows graze in the pasture in summer.

There is such a farm some kilometres from our farm, isolated up between high hills in the middle of a big forest. The view is stunning, enabling you to see firs and pines along the horizon far away. The access road is long and winding, ending in a peaceful dirt road some kilomteres from the main road. In the winter when the farm is completely abandoned, the feeling of loneliness becomes manifest, the dark small rooms with dusty furniture, the windows covered with frost, and the lack of footprints in the snow.

For about 50 years ago a brother and his sister lived there. Too humble a life for many I think. They worked the fields, cared for their animals, seemingly contented with each other’s company, growing old together. Their life changed suddenly when a fire broke out and completely destroyed their home. History and future burnt to ashes.

An small road streching through the forest to one of the fields. Both the gate and the gateposts are gone.

The only thing that now remains of their home is the ground and the doorstep, nothing else, except for the small adjoining buildings, tells about the home in which they grew up, lived and grew older. Too old to start afresh they moved, still together, hired a house and lived there until they moved to an elderly home. The sister died first. The brother followed her some years after. Their life is as unknown, as their home, untalked of, unimportant to this fast, efficient society. I think though that they are together now, much happier, in joy, their friendship and goodness having an eternal value.

Standing there breathing the atmosphere of silence wanting to revive the farm, but at the same time filled with fascination for its sleep, I realise my own mortality, my own limitation, well aware of that my wish never will be realised. But to be a guest, though uninvited, has its charm, enjoying the peace and the beauty, free to imagine what could have been.

Tag: dreams

A sleeping house

A farm between the hills