Oh, how I love to explore abandoned places. Nothing quite
satisfies my curiosity like finding an old homestead in the middle
of a forest. They say that time travel isn’t possible. However,
that’s not exactly true. With a little bit of cleverness and a lot of
persistence, people can travel back in time. And while there are far
easier ways to venture back into the past than exploring abandoned
homes and roads - reading a book or watching a documentary
comes to mind – finding and investigating forgotten places are
among the most rewarding.
The way it works is as follows: I’ll be scouring over an old topographic
map or aerial photograph and notice the shape of an old barn,
silo, or home. (There are ways beyond the scope of this writing to
determine within a couple of acres, the exact locations of these old
structures.) I make notes and set out to see what’s left - if anything.
Once I’m out (usually in the middle of nowhere or on the outskirts
of a town) I’ll search for (and find) abandoned homesteads. On
the ground, one of the first things I look for is a spring-fed stream.
From there, it is not atypical to find patches of jonquils or other
perennial flowers – those hearty enduring indicators of forlorn
gardens. Next, I’ll scan the surrounding perimeter of the garden
for evidence of rock walls, foundations, or old metal equipment.
Sometimes there are burn barrels, barbed wire fences, or abandoned
metal boxes. Further investigation will typically lead to discovering
old bottles, usually without labels, but sometimes with engraved
indicators of the manufacturers.
In many ways, it is like examining a debris field from an accident.
There are fragments of a previous life that give hints to what it
was like living in the past. With little difficulty one can imagine a
farmer, tending to a crop, gathering water from the spring, filling
a glass bottle, and hanging a barbed wire fence to keep out intruding
animals. An old dirt road would have served as a challenging
entrance and exit to a distant community. And travel must have
taken longer given the lack of paved roads when the farm was
built. The population of a rural county would have been very
small, so neighbors were spaced far apart and towns even farther.
Therefore, a trip to town probably happened once a week at the
most, if not less. All-in-all, one would have lived an insular life,
one dependent upon hard work, family, and a perpetual fight with
the elements, nature, time, and entropy.
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