Things Reclaimed

For as long as I can remember, I have been drawn down deserted roads. Although long since travelled, and with more dirt and gravel than actual roadway, I can’t resist the urge to see where these nearly forgotten paths take me.

I have stumbled upon farmhouses (to call them barely standing would be generous), and old store fronts that once housed a bustling drygood store (the decomposing mannequins still stacked in the windows)…or a tack shop…or a feedstore.

Sometimes it looks like the inhabitants just stepped out for a moment–everything still in place. Perhaps they ran next door to borrow a cup of sugar…only whatever might have been next door is long gone. Other times, I wander into a ramshackle shop that clearly was picked clean years ago; rusty tin cans and long-yellowed paper litter the floor.

These abandoned places haunt me, but not nearly as much as the people. I have a habit of creating stories about the people who lived there, and these characters seem as real to me as the mice that scamper inside the water-stained walls of these places I visit. Some of these characters find their way onto the page; others still linger in my mind just waiting to be set free.