Weathered Wood and Love

It was an old red barn, commonly known as an English barn it was 50 by 75 ft and I loved her, although she's not mine anymore I still do. She was moved there in 1908, five years after the house on the property was built in 1903 for a Mennonite minister and his third and last wife. She was made of hand hewn timbers of oak, poplar and cedar shingles with thousands upon thousands of fine square nails in her roof. Hewn by hands that had no choice but to take simple tools and with sweat and muscle shape this huge building into a tool itself. A tool made from things that once lived, to house things that bring life. I call the barn "she" because this barn had so many attributes that made it a thing of beauty that like other more mechanical devices transcends from being just created to truly being a creation. In typical fashion she had a milking area with rusty old stations that held the cow in position and a block milk house that was at the northern end and had the only sign of any sort of climate control. Hand carved pins that held her together and old hay from decades before. Her ridge line was 50ft above the earth and had greeted so many sunsets and sun rises it would be difficult to count. I was fortunate enough to sit up there many times and simply enjoy the view, watch a few of the Lord's sunsets myself and feel the gentle breeze of summer. I never really felt I owned her I felt more as a steward over her. I fixed the foundation of stone dug from the earth nearby, replaced the siding as money allowed and prayed that lightning would stay away. I knew that she was standing a century before I came along and I prayed that the roof I put on would maintain her until another owner comes along that would see her for what she is. My fondest memories involved my daughter on the tire swing out front and the simple joy of having the gift of appearing to own that barn that you could see from a mile away. The reality was I never really owned her, she has always owned me. I was simply there to preserve her for another generation to laugh on a swing out front and enjoy the view aloft on warm summer evenings.

S.B. McWilliams 2008