Just A Bit Further

The farmhouse is a relief as I step out of the tree line and into an overgrown field with my family. As I hurry toward it ahead of the others the building is obviously not the salvation we had hoped it might be. The paint has long since worn off, either from time or weather, and the doorway stands empty. Sometimes, looking at pictures online, I can hardly believe that the scenes captured by others could possibly be real. The abandoned farm is one of those images. From a distance it is idyllic, an old house in the background with an overgrown field before it and even a multiple-row plow left to rust in the dirt to one side. Up close it is no less photogenic. The store house must be years abandoned, the broken boards in the single room space left undisturbed save for the new plant life that works to reclaim the area. Anywhere back home the place would be boarded off with “no trespassing” signs, nearly impossible to enter. Here it’s all just another part of the landscape.

There is no phone inside, a feeble hope but the farm has at least given us something better than the old woodcutter’s trail we had been following in the woods. A road stretches out in both directions in front of the ruined building, the only thing left to do is to pick a direction and continue on our way. There is no way of knowing which will take us closer to help and which farther away. In the end we leave it to chance.

Getting lost in the great northern woods of Canada had not been part of the plan when we had struck out for a short hike now hours past. Finding an abandoned farm hadn't been part of that plan either, but seeing it for the first time is an image that I will not forget. Walking down the road, spirits renewed with a real road underfoot even if only of packed dirt, we come across a chain strung across our path with a sign hung on it warning off trespassers. We step around it unsure if we dodged a bullet, or how accurate that turn of phrase is applied to our situation. There is no rust on the sign.