barnlight

i visited a beautiful old barn in cavan township just east of peterborough.


there's a silence in barns similar to that in a church. the light sometimes bursts and sometimes simply whispers through windows and cracks. doorways that have seen seasons come and go. have held out winter storms and held in summer cool. have seen life's noisy arrival and its quiet departure.

john updike wrote beautifully about a barn . . . .

"a barn, in a day, is a small night. the splinters of light between the dry shingles pierce the high roof like stars, and the rafters and crossbeams and built-in ladders seem, until your eyes adjust, as mysterious as the branches of a haunted forest. david entered silently .... the smell of old straw scratched his sinuses.... the mouths of empty bins gaped like caves. rusty oddments of farming — coils of baling wire, some spare tines for a harrow, a handleless shovel — hung on nails driven here and there in the thick wood. he stood stock-still a minute; it took a while to separate the cooing of the pigeons from the rustling in his ears. when he had focused on the cooing, it flooded the vast interior with its throaty, bubbling outpour: there seemed no other sound. they were up behind the beams. what light there was leaked through the shingles and the dirty glass windows at the far end and the small round holes, about as big as basketballs, high on the opposite stone side walls, under the ridge of the roof."
from the story “pigeon feathers.”