I'm snooping in other people's barns on an early November six-mile run near my home. Around here, very few barns actually house animals any more. Some of them still shelter hay, but most of them are just big airy storage units for stuff that nobody wants any more.
Which makes them crack for me, who used to haunt flea markets and tag sales back in the days when I still thought I needed stuff. Now, I drive by yard sales with a steely resolve not to be dragged in.
I'm already thinking about how much crap I have, and what I'm going to do with it all when I can't deal with it any more. A person with a lot of interests (art, music, natural history, books, science, horticulture, aquariums, batkeeping, specimen prep to name just a few) accumulates a LOT of crap in half a lifetime.
So I love to look at other people's stuff. Everything in this post is in the near barn with the silver roof, and the half a satellite deesh poking out of the carriage space. See photo above.
Mmm. Beautiful blue Mason jar, nice limited palette composition.
A box of rags, and a robin's nest that must've fallen from a beam above.
More jars and some gas pipeline, and some great Wyethian milkhouse light at the end of the corn crib.
A very large hole, with bedding. Could be woodchuck, probably is. But could be the work of a rat, too. Rats live pretty large for their size.
I couldn't find any telltale hairs.
Mousestuff. Oh, don't worry. I will definitely remove the lids before microwaving.
Mice love jars. So do Carolina wrens! Oh my, what a place for a nest. Couldn't tell if the fledglings made it or not. Carolina wrens are such neat housekeepers there's rarely ever a telltale poop left behind.
This was a cool find: a whole box full of tape dispensers? Huh?
The white-footed mice have been opening hickory nuts here.
Hickory dickory dock. The mouse ran up the tape dispenser.
The tape theme would continue upstairs. I was drawn by curiosity up the Stairway of Poop.
If you know raccoons, you know they love to poop on things. Preferably stairs, where your foot is about to go.
And at the top of stairs. Eating persimmons, I see. Me, too. Only I remove the seeds at the upper end of my alimentary tract, thank you.
At the top of the stairs, a sort of living room, one Vermeer would have liked to paint, if he liked junky interiors. An elegant wing chair, full of some kind of video games. Shazzam! I'd been hoping they were eight-track tapes. That would have been amusing, to go through the titles. But video games mean nothing to me. It's like looking at runes.
Absolutely love the lighting here. Yum.
Yes, I find these scenes compellingly creepy. Especially when I get the feeling people have been, um, doing stuff up here, amidst the animal droppings.
The mind does go places. Sometimes comes a bit unhinged.
The runes never speak.
Outside, the beeches whisper of Lothlorien, of a cleaner, more wholesome place, a place where I belong. And on I trot.
11 comments:
feel like you've just given us your version of leading a tour through DisneyLand.
Raccoon poop! So that's the animal that keeps pooping on the cinderblock border surrounding my compost pile! I had thought it was one of the feral cats that come by from time to time (and that I chase off when I see them, hissing and growling at them. I figure that I should speak to them in their own language. I'm sure it keeps the neighbors talking.) I thought that cats were a bit more private, burying their poop. I'm glad to know that it's the raccoons instead. We had a family of them trooping through during the summer. It was so cute to see the mother followed by her four little ones. They would bathe in our fish pond, sometimes knocking over the fountainhead in their exuberance, but they never bothered the fish. Why should they, when they have a constant source of numminess on the compost pile?
One word comes to mind -- fusty. Gah! I'm not one for dust-covered flotsam jetsam. Creepy. But the light is good, not enough to counter the other for me.
Fascinating. Puzzling. Lovely. And yet I can't help but think your posts also serve as another way to help locate your body when you don't come home one day.
I was just wondering about a poop I saw in the forest the other day. Gray. No hair in it. And perched on top of a rock like a DQ cone. "Go poop on a rock" sounds like something you'd say to someone if you were mean.
What a find! Who'da thought all that crap (uh huh) would make such a lovely picture story!
I love poking around in ruined places, a bit scary. I would have appropriated that blue jar.
Except for the light, worthy of Wyeth, as you noted and the little wren nest, this stuff was rather creepy in feeling. Well, I read lots of mysteries. Nice area for running though.
I love learning things...I also did not know that raccoons like to poop ON things! Now I will know when they visit my yard. I loved the photographs. As someone who LOVES yard sales and junk...and being in my fifties...you can imagine the things I have accumulated too. I live in area that also has some well-known flea markets...will I never learn...probably not. Great post.
Beautiful photos. Finding things someone has left behind or stored in old buildings leaves me feeling melancholic and curious about human nature: Where are those people? What kinds of lives did they have? Where did they go? Or are they still alive and living nearby? What was it like when these buildings were "alive!?" Thanks, Julie. And a six run!! Wohoo!! No Chet photo-bombing--did he stay home? When I first saw the photos of the chair I thought it was Chet in it. But alas, no.
You find the coolest stuff!
I could turn that room with a chair into a man cave. No, really I could!
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