Every morning on my way to work I drive cross-country through the Kansas Flint Hills, rounding checkerboard fields ripe for Spring planting, past limestone homesteads, and following the meandering Kansas River for a short time. Cattle ranches linger and chickens peck peck peck in the dirt. Abandoned rusty cars litter the landscape contrasting with newer hill-top homes which strain to reach the sky. I see many of the same familiar cars passing me each day on their way into Manhattan, as I leave it for my job 30 minutes west.
It's a dichotomy drive--old & new; dilapidated and fresh buildings; tender green grasses fighting out of the deadness of winter; rolling hills surrounding deep scarred valleys.
And, if you know me well, you know that my eye tends to capture the rustic, the old and hold them in my imagination. I guess that's what brought me face-to-face with the old house pictured here that seemed to have collapsed in upon itself. Textures and colors and lines askew create a web of intrique amidst wooden sentries guarding a windswept prairie home.
Behind the house a ramshackle barn mirrors its partner. What manner of disaster had fallen upon this home, this farm, this family? A tornado? Old age, perhaps? What story does it whisper to its passersby? So many each day speed by without even a glance through the grove to the turquoise roof standing end on end.
What do they miss in their hurry? What do any of us miss in our haste each day? Opportunities to learn, to explore, to see beyond our harried world?
What will it take to slow down?
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