Other people's dreams

I’m in Minnesota this week and we’ve taken several road trips getting from site to site. Since I wasn’t the car renter this trip, I’ve had plenty of opportunity to gaze out the window at the country passing by.

Like Washington and many other states through which I’ve passed, Minnesota has no shortage of abandoned homesteads and barns. They always seem to catch my eye.

Don’t get me wrong – I love the look of a nicely kept, working farm. White fences and well-conceived building layouts make me feel optimistic. No small number of such farms are to be seen on the roads north of St. Paul.

But what really gets me to thinking is the sight of a swaybacked, gap-toothed, long greyed out farmhouse with visible holes in the porch planking and perhaps a few blackberry vines growing out through long-empty windows. They draw my mind like quarks intrigue astrophysicists.

I can’t help wondering whose dream this building once represented. It requires almost no effort for me to imagine a young farm couple standing in front of the house, feeling that they’ve finally arrived. I can imagine the long hours, hearty meals and children borne without the aid of a modern hospital.

This old house saw triumph and tragedy, as they say. But mostly, it saw the steady progression of days that make up the life of a family.

I suppose there’s a note of sadness in the decay of these old structures. But they make me happy. Because they represent someone’s dreams and for some period of time, I like to imagine that the dream came true.