When I was in grad school, I hung out with John Agnew every so often. He’s a geographer. I’d read his book and enjoyed social geography, something I’d never known about given that most of us think of geography as maps and rivers and stuff.
I’ve mentioned before how much I miss geography — both natural and man made. When I got here, it really hit home how much. I really love it here so far. I missed the architecture of the older homes. I missed the pine trees. I missed the rolling hills and the way the deciduous trees lose their leaves. I missed tulips budding in spring. I missed the way the sun looks when it’s setting on a cold, late winter evening.
It is funny how you can miss the geography of place — a least me. I will never again be able to enjoy the feeling of looking down from the top of Owego hill road to see the glacier carved valley below, covered in early morning mist, thinking how, if you imagined it just right, the mist was really the glaciers that had been there many many years ago, carving out what would become the valleys, streams, rivers, and lakes of the area that had been my home town. I’ll never get that back b/c the town is so dead, work wise, that there’s no going back.
But tulips and daffodils blossom in the spring elsewhere. And tall pine trees grow so dense that the ground below is a bed of thick pine needles blanketing a rich, acidic, black, loamy dirt beneath — a black earth so rich with decaying material that it’s light and airy and when you walk on it. The earth beneath sinks a bit as your body weight crushes out the tiny pockets of air formed from the decay of pine needles, leaves, bark, and animal matter. And when you look up, slowly moving from the earth skyward, you notice the light playing on the pine needle bed and the trees with sap oozing from the trunks. When your eyes finally gaze above, you see the bright blue sky peeking out through the canopy of pines. The sun beams its rays down in rivulets of light splashing on the ivy growing up the lanky sides of the pines. You close your eyes for a while and open them again, this time imagining whispy ghosts of people and animals that had been through before, stopping to eat wild berries growing in a patch of rich black earth where just enough light shines through to nudge flowers and eventually berries from the patch.
It was missed.
When I explored the neighborhood where the photos below were taken, I spied a cottage sitting far back from the road. It was nestled in a dense forest of tall pines. It was a little broken down, the kind of house you buy because it’s the worst one on the block and the fixing up will mean it’ll take on the value of the surrounding homes.
I stood there in the thick of the pines, all dark and yet bright, with those patches of blue sky and white clouds high above. I stood there and rested my hand on the tree trunk, feeling the bark of the pine, taking in the scent of loamy black earth and pine needles. Feeling like home, so much so I want to lay on the ground and feel the scratchy dry pine needles, run my hands into the dirt and scoop up a handful and bury my face in the feel and scent of it.
It was missed.
Hidden, abandoned cottages in old dense forests tell stories about the people who’d built them and lived in them, the people who let it get run down. Hidden, abandoned cottages take you aside to whisper tales of loves gained and lost, families born and sundered, lives lived and lives merely endured. They creak in the wind, heaving desperate sighs over broken hearts and abandoned dreams. They exhale — quietly — as the sun warms the wood, the house brightening and beaming proudly, overflowing with proud tales of braves souls who’d found solace and renewal within its walls.
In the warm winter sun, the house glows and expands with the warmth to sing the memories of chidren’s mirth and squeals of joy.
Hidden, abandoned cottages nestled in dense pine stands under a bright blue sky tell stories of days gone by.
Place. It was missed.
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