Old houses make me sad. Abandoned, and often overgrown with vines and thickets, they stand sentinel to the past. They hold their secrets jealously while seeming to mourn the long gone families that once inhabited them.

The county that I live in is sparsely populated, and many dirt roads still ramble through the countryside. I’ve traveled many of those roads, and run across these derelict homes.

Their gaping windows and sagging doors beckon to me, daring me to discover the barrenness they now enclose.

I ache to know their history. I wonder who originally owned them, and whatever became of them.

I long to step over their thresholds and peer into every corner, searching for some hint of what once was. But alas, being that I am but a trespasser, I wistfully stand at the boundary, and bid them my own farewell.

photos courtesy
Robbie Wright