Autumn's wind down winding up?

Last Summer, while on the way (actually, a different way) home from the WEI CSA farm in Amador, we saw a really well made, really dilapidated, outbuilding on one of the farms near Wild River State Park. I took several pictures and continued home. Several weeks later, out of idle curiosity, I retraced that route, or so I thought. The building wasn't where I'd left it. As dilapidated as it was, I didn't think it had totally collapsed and disappeared. It would have left some sort of trace. Because it troubles me when I misplace my car keys, let alone an entire building, today's activities included a very methodical search, using the county plat book. I had a helpful navigator, the daughter person's fiancee. Each road was checked off as it was driven. After we had covered about 7.5 miles, criss-crossing the township, there it was, right where we'd left it.

old out building                 © harrington

I'm still toying with the question of what could be done with the lumber if the building were purchased and deconstructed. Bookshelves and coffee tables come to mind. I don't think the logs are wide enough for that to work well. Maybe it will still be there if I ever come up with a reuse idea. Yesterday's photos of the Christmas lights weren't the best. After dark, but before supper, I played with my camera and got a couple of pictures that provide a better sense of the magic of Christmas lights. Here's hoping your holidays are at least this bright and cheery and you home warm and full of love (and loved ones), a setting more comfortable than Thomas McGrath portrays in his poem.

  Christmas house lights at night        © harrington

Christmas lights and greenery closeup    © harrington

Beyond the Red River

By Thomas McGrath 

The birds have flown their summer skies to the south,

And the flower-money is drying in the banks of bent grass

Which the bumble bee has abandoned. We wait for a winter lion,

Body of ice-crystals and sombrero of dead leaves.

A month ago, from the salt engines of the sea,

A machinery of early storms rolled toward the holiday houses

Where summer still dozed in the pool-side chairs, sipping

An aging whiskey of distances and departures.

Now the long freight of autumn goes smoking out of the land.

My possibles are all packed up, but still I do not leave.

I am happy enough here, where Dakota drifts wild in the universe,

Where the prairie is starting to shake in the surf of the winter dark.

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