There is a certain sense of timelessness when you pass through the door and enter the hayloft of my family's dairy barn.  Built in 1888, the dimly lit grand space has hosted the play of many children, the backbreaking labour of the annual hay-harvest, and provided refuge to countless animals.  Each past activity is evidenced by scars upon the aging interior, and in the very dust of its atmosphere hidden away from the outside world.  

The farm lies on the high ground just south of the Mohawk River Valley.  Less than forty kilometres from Cooperstown, the view can be striking.  Gazing southeast, Cherry Valley is seen in marvelous detail, with flashes of light reflected from the metal roofing of little houses hidden among the hills.  On clear days the rumble of a train may be heard and the occasional car on a country road.  Much nearer are the other dairies with cattle grazing in late spring pastures while the farmer plows his fields to honest brown.  In May our farmland is a yellow carpet, coloured by boastful dandelions in contrast to the soft green woods and close-cropt pastures that immediately neighbour us.  The barn and sheds are typical barn-red and sit clustered by the road, arranged about a pear shaped circular drive.  All of the buildings are tidy and outwardly modern.  The uniformity of painted steel siding is almost disappointing, and after looking long enough, you begin to crave the irregularity of weather-beaten boards with knotholes to peek through.   

Rough-hewn beams, thick and fashioned from a single tree, are invisible from the outside, but by stepping into the loft, an innate curiosity for imperfection and adventure is fulfilled.  

Upon entrance your nostrils are assaulted by dust, motes of history decades old, and disturbed by your footsteps.  Composed mostly of pulverised straw and grain, it smells quite like an old-fashioned kitchen with grandmother's fresh baked bread and the spices within worn cabinets.  In the shaft of light from the door just opened, the straw particles glisten, gold and magical, the fairy-dust of a child's imagination.  The light itself is unlike anywhere else I've been--dim and gentle it cascades down onto a myriad objects and creates shadows that are never foreboding.  Peaceful cooing from the pigeons and the lowing of cattle would disarm any lingering fear.  Other sounds are rare.  Never really noticeable are the creaks of aging boards or scurrying footsteps.  The room is spacious above you, with criss-crossing beams and cables; all creating an illusion of impossible turns and angles.  Below, the floor is nearly hidden by various agricultural implements necessary in the endless chores of a farmer.  But these are not noticed so much by a child whose eyes favour the spectacular play place provided in the cables, crossbeams, and the monstrous stacks of hay.  

I can remember a day in my childhood when the past connected itself to our world of skyscrapers and graffiti while I played in the loft with my neighbour, Cassy.  We built a fortress of hay-bales, imagining the trading posts of the 19th century frontier and played there crawling among the beams and bales, tip-toeing along the cables.  Cassy and I were closer to the past than we imagined as we amused ourselves in the way so many farm children have.  Except for our dresses we could have been from any decade of the past hundred years.  I still hear her laughter when downy feathers swirled around us and landed on her nose.  I recall scratchy straw, scraped elbows and knees, and dares to inch across dusty beams. 

That dust, coating every surface not recently disturbed, created a chalkboard for us to decorate.   This is in fact how we made our discovery, as we scribbled along the grey wall, forming tawny hieroglyphs.  We had seen the old door, no longer used and stranded metres above the floor when the area was void of hay.  It did not make us wonder, the door was simply another variation in the texture of the wall until it was part of our mural one day.  As our fingers traced, spelt our imaginings and formed figures, we uncovered the graffiti of others.  We were amazed to find phrases etched into the wood, maths figures and Jane loves so and so, all over a century old.  The implications were not slow to enter our minds and it made us pause to think we were doing the same thing in the same dimly lit spot as some one else so long ago.   

History was real that day in the dust and bread-scent of the loft.  The past is taught and spoken of, but for me it was written on the dry timbers of a door found in a dun-coloured loft.  I can smell the past in hay dust, taste it in the air and know when I see it in a soft-cast shadow.  History is part of a door on a simple farm on the southern rim of the Mohawk River Valley.  

Author's Biography

I am sixteen years old and attend Fulton-Montgomery college as an early admissions student.  I currently live on campus in Johnstown, New York. 

As much as I have groaned about chores and farm life, I have come to find that the dairy is a major part of my life and am using my experiences often in my writing.

E-mail Dawn at dxdowning@ozu.es

Essay Reviews!

Want to read some? Or write some? Great! 
We need your input!

Site Reviews!

We'd like to know from our readers if they enjoy Seven Seas Magazine! Do you have praise or complaints? Suggestions or ideas? 
Would you like to read reviews by other readers? 
Please check out our Site Reviews Page

Get notified!

Would you like to get notified as soon as new Seven Seas issues are published on the Web?
Get notified!

Tell a friend!

Do you enjoy the Seven Seas site? 
Please tell a friend to stop by!
Tell a friend!

Go back to the table of contents
 of the current issue.

You just read essay # 2.  Read essay #

1   2    3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14