The Tomb and Womb of Life

Bonnie and Duke were with us that day. We arrived in Shepherdstown around 4:30 p.m. After stopping at the only stop-light in town, we drove past the college, the abandoned train station and the shanties huddled under hickory. We continued over a pocketed, dirt road until we could drive no further. With supplies in our arms, we walked the last half-mile through brush and bracken to a deserted mansion. The moist black earth hushed our eager tread. Squirrels heralded our arrival as they called their greetings from the limbs. Sparrows took note of us, but continued their more important work overhead.

According to townsfolk, this house had been built by a local man in the early 1900's for his young and lovely European bride. But soon after it was completed, the house and its lady within - its soul, its raison d’être - were consumed by a raging fire. Only the shell remains - a home now for all manner of other-than-human life. They say the man despaired and never returned. It is clear that he never reclaimed the home which housed his dream.

Our Lady of Nature has dreams of her own. She has begun the slow, healing work of destruction. Scavengers have stripped the interior of its paneling, exposing red clay block walls. Trees have sent roots into beams and stone walls; saplings spring from the remaining sections of the roof. Rains are attacking the foundations. Pipes, cables and even nails, corroding under the coordinated assaults of wind and water, are returning to the dust from which they came. Vines have scaled the walls, exploiting every crevice.

Wildflowers now grow in fireplaces high above the foundations. Blooming roses poke their heads above the ferns. They are all that remain of once-formal gardens overlooking the Potomac.

We approached deferentially. Soon the smells of burning wood and cooking hamburgers mingled with the honeysuckle and nearby river odors. We ate our bread and drank our wine in silence: the bittersweet Eucharist of friends too soon to part. We laughed at the follies of our childhood and grew pensive before the hopes those children entrusted to us.

We tried to see the future; the house loomed before us. Its enigmatic presence commanded our attention even as it commanded the landscape. Without its soul, it became the soul of the larger wilderness. Embracing earth and sky as one, it welcomed all into its sun-warmed cavities - to rest and peace, to the tomb and womb of life.

 All too quickly the sun, that benevolent tyrant of our lives, hastened westward. Shadows climbed the walls to join the coming darkness of the skies. We turned away from this strange presence and retraced our steps to the car. Along the way we stopped to examine other half- hidden buildings. They also were beginning the long transformation.

We loaded the car and drove the last seven miles through the gentle West Virginia countryside -- back to the towns, our homes and the on-going busyness of our species.