Reclaiming Buildings
I found these pics on the blog of a fellow Knoxvillian, and after a short e-mail, I am sharing them with you. Dig:
Appalachia is just littered with old houses, stores and outbuildings being reclaimed by the earth. Rather than maintaining buildings, people seem to allow them to just go into a gradual decay, until they are swallowed back up by the lush plant life around them. My kids have gotten used to me swerving off the road to snap a photo of the structures, and one of my sons asked me if I intended to post a series of them. I do, and they'll appear here from time to time. I find the wreckage both visually disturbing and starkly beautiful.
Thanks CSL.
2 comments:
I love those ramshackle old dwellings. Out behind my grandparent's farm in Chuckey, TN there is an old "ghost town." It takes about fifteen minutes on foot to wind across a couple of ridges and follow the watershed back to this odd looking meadow. It is basically a series of buildings - about five - that are all slowly being taken by the vegetation. It's an old farm really, but it's neat the way it sits at the base of the hollow and lies there in its spooky decomposing state.
There is a "neighborhood" like this off SR104 which was the Ohio-Erie Canal towpath just south of Lucasville, Ohio. There are two different farmsteads five to six hundred yards apart up a holler leading from the old canal not far from a lock. From what I gather one of the farms was part of a much larger holding and I would not be surprised if the smaller farm was rented.
It is now all contained in another family owned farm which is still in operation. So while it is a bit sad to see old houses and barns that were once home to families and livestock rot into the earth, it is good to know that another family is still grazing cattle on the same pastures and growing hay in the same fields. They just live in a more modern house closer to the road.
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