The Light Shining Through

This old barn has caught my attention of late. I have photographed it often in the recent past. This evening at dusk just before sunset I went out with my camera to see what I would find. I found the old barn as usual and noticed a speck of light shining through it. It was something I had not noticed before. It certainly has to do with the time of day. The light was coming from the west side and shining through the window on the east. I took these photographs.

I found that the window in the barn actually peers through one side of the barn and out of the other; perhaps it is not a window on the other side, but a hole made by the passage of time.

I see a metaphor of many things with the old barn having served its usefulness; full of accumulated junk and now the light shining through.

On my 60th birthday I feel an affinity with the old wreck of a barn and sense the light shining through myself.

Soon the night will come.

And the morning must of necessity follow.

Photographs and text copyright by David H. Roche 2006

The Barn and its Dance on the Corner

At dawn the world begins,

the things hidden in the night

return again.

..

The barn on the corner

emerges by degrees
from the darkness.

The colors

are hidden in the sun

and daylight paints the barn with

different nuances every day.

It is put together by means of timber frame construction, a technique that has been dated to ancient Egypt and achieving it's final technical form in the 14th century. The timber frame construction is so durable that buildings made with this technique a thousand years ago are still in use today.

Its frame is made of rough cut logs, hand chiseled to the necessary size with mortise and tenon joints fastened with wooden pins hammered through the ends to hold the structure solidly together.

For a period of time in the 19th century and into the 20th century the construction style was abandoned in favor of 2 x 4's and nails, along with concrete and sheet metal for siding. But a renewed interest in the timber frame construction resumed in the 1960's for housing construction owing to it's ability to provide large spacious living areas.

This barn has been on the hilltop at the intersection of Silver st. and Townline rd. for at least 80 years, and is a stable reassuring presence reflecting an era that has passed. It has been almost as much a part of the landscape as the hills and the horizons.

Each morning it reappears. Each night it slips into the darkness. This is its dance.

Text and photographs copyright 2006 by David H. Roche