Here's a little place I visited this summer.

A few miles down from the house where I grew up the county road turns to gravel. A few miles further still the road crosses a large creek. Just beyond the creek, and just off the road, sits an old house. The house is far from any other dwellings. I passed it several times over the years when exploring out that way and noticed how isolated it seemed. It showed signs of habitation until only a few years ago. Now it is completely abandoned.



The house still looks basically sound. The vandals and scrap metal hunters have not yet found it and ransacked it. The yard and fields around and behind it are gradually surrendering to encroaching vegetation. You can still see the well in back.

Around back the house has an attached screened-in porch. This porch has not stood the test of time as well as the main body of the house. It has partially fallen in and no longer has a working door. A sufficiently slim and agile visitor can gain access to the house that way. I could not resist when I last visited.

Like many houses of its size and vintage, the place is a warren of small rooms. The shade and the smallish windows made the interior rather dark, but I could see to get around well enough. The available light was not really adequate for photography. I did not let that stop me.



The interior was dark and dirty and musty. Insects buzzed here and there. But the house was not ruinous. Away from the ruined porch I did not find the piles of old leaves and trash and rotting materials that one sees in most abandoned houses. Apparently it is still fairly weatherproof. In a pinch I could stand spending a night there. It would no doubt be awfully spooky.

Some of the rooms were virtually empty. Others had odds and ends of furniture and assorted junk. In one room a bed and mattress still stood in one corner. A set of pantry shelves held assorted food containers and what looked like old jars of preserves. The living room still contained a few items, including a wall calendar that indicated that the house had last been inhabited in mid-2002. Some windows still had curtains.



The most remarkable item I found was an old bottle that stood beside the grimy kitchen sink in the dim light of a dirty window. The bottle had raised floral designs painted blue. I could not tell whether this color had been on there originally or had been added later for some reason by some anonymous craftsman or woman. The bottle had no brand names or logos. It was the sole object of beauty remaining in the whole house.



When I left the house, I left the bottle and everything else I found exactly as I found it. “Leave only footprints, take only photos,” as the admonition goes for hikers at public parks and nature sites. The old house has gone a good while without suffering damage from the vandals and scavengers and souvenir hunters that devastate old structures at an increasing rate. I’m not about to start its ruin.

I hope this house can avoid their attention for a long time to come. Intact abandoned structures are like time capsules, recording lives and households gone by. They are minor treasures. I’m glad I have had the chance to unearth this one.