The first visit to the abandoned farm we thought we might buy. Twenty-five years ago. The drive. Country roads snaked endlessly. Little brick-ranch houses surrounded by large rolling lawns of neatly mowed grass with no trees in the yards. Beyond the yards lay hoop houses, fields of row crops, cover crops, cows, goats, sheep. And, peppered in, persisted ramshackle mobile homes, lean-tos, dilapidated pole barns, tobacco barns. Finally, beyond all that, lurked wild areas no one seemed to think needed tending.
We drove slowly down the dirt-and-gravel road to reach the waiting farm. A wake of gravel dust lingered behind us. Partially collapsed barns and large fields of drying feed corn loomed along the sides of the road.
But the timeworn, deserted farmland we came to see was wild. Once tamed, gone feral. The long-fallow fields were distinguishable from the forest only by the lack of fully grown trees. Instead of large hardwoods, they sat rife with sweet-gum saplings growing closely together like the grass of Brobdingnag.
Other than some old tobacco barns, there were two structures built directly across a small yard from one another, a tractor path dividing the yard between them. On one side was what we would label The Blair Witch House, a structure that had been built of wood and then stuccoed over. No running water. Low ceilings. An old pellet stove. Haunted.
On the other side was a tiny white house that had been built on a foundation of four huge rocks. In 1970, the addition of a proper concrete slab porch was made, complete with a ceiling painted what was once a bright Crayola sea green. Running water had been made available at that time as well, and the pipes were laid above the floor. The well was just outside the house and shallow, only 25 feet deep. Down the path was a mule barn. Thick ivy, Virginia creeper, and the largest, most tangled up wisteria vines we'd ever seen framed a vague barrier between the woods and the house--also haunted.
We picked the future home site away from the two old houses. The site, once a small pasture, was reclaimed by nature, verdant, wild, growing with abandon near the pond. Days, weeks of work commenced, clearing the space taking care to remove only what was absolutely necessary.
The partially built house in winter: the way snow drifted in. We swept the delicate flakes off of the sub-floor so it wouldn't melt on the wood.
During a walk down the gravel drive, alone with gossamer poems in my head, something caught my eye in the periphery. Something large and black, moving silently with speed and stealth. Brain thought "gorilla." But of course that was ridiculous. I went to find you working on the house. You calmly noted that you had heard a bear that morning. Of course. I had glimpsed a black bear. Sometimes we see their prints in the snow. The wildness still surrounds us: coyote, bobwhite quail, barred owl, wild turkey, bobcat, hawk, deer, vulture, fox, eagle, mink.
We've been here. Present. Working. We've witnessed the changes. Storm, drought, flood. Summer breeze, birdsong, hurricane. You've convinced the earth to feed us. Meager harvests gradually became bountiful ones. Seasons lumber along the wheel. We spy on the stars in early evenings on shorter days and in the dark morning skies while the roosters crow to convince themselves they will live forever.
The silent deer watch us. The coyotes watch, too.