There’s a barn on our place in Maryland. Along its northern side’s a narrow garage, added on by the Lamotts in the 40s, before we arrived in ’49. There’s an old silver maple that’s grown into that wall overtime and has, every year, fattened and pushed more and more into the building , like a in-grown toenail. Its determined roots bubbling the garages’ thin foundation.

At one time it was a drive through garage, but early on we filled the far end with stuff we had no use for and so it’s always been blocked. The tractor lives at the far end in winter and a car can be tucked in behind, but it’s a tight fit.

I always resented that garage because the windows for each stall opens into its dark recesses rather than into fresh air and a view of a green expanse of light and trees. I had a sense at a young age, I guess, for what made good practical design. This addition was poorly conceived. Particularly since even I could see that at the far end of the barn was a long shed where a garage could easily have been added that wouldn’t have impacted our horses quality of life at all.

But it’s too late for these thoughts now.

There are huge doors at the front of the barn that are rarely closed. It’s an ordeal to shut them as they have to be lifted and jimmied cause they sag – too heavy for their weak hinges. The whole building sits on a cement slab, except for the end stall, that’s got an earth floor. That’s where Sheba, our old Black Lab, used to welp her pups and Benny, our Shetland pony, once stood in deep holes filled with water, cause he foundered after getting into the grain.

It was originally a cow barn, built in the late 30s to house beef cattle, we think, probably Black Angus. The sale of their meat helped sustain the Lamott family, living there during the war.

We have horses ‘cause of Alec Holston. He told my folks when they arrived from the city, “A barn’s dead without animals. And a dead barn’s a shameful thing.” Alec was a horse-man and my Dad had ridden and loved horses as a child, so horses it was that made our barn come alive. But cement’s not ideal for horses sensitive feet.

Think about it. Like a ballerina on toe, they literally walk and run around on one thick nail at the end of each leg. Wikipedia says, “[Horse’s hooves are] both hard and flexible…. Their other digits have receded over millennia but can be detected still within the hoof skeleton.} Alec knew this and so much more about the miraculous structure of horses hooves and taught us to soften the floors of their stalls with mounds of straw and sawdust.

The slab-sided walls of the barn were white washed in and out every so often by Alec. The barn was really his territory – his area of expertise. He died in ’64 and the barn was never white washed again. It has never been one of those pristine barns, but a well used space; neat, yet dusty. Its surfaces have the patina of a lightly rinsed oyster shell.

Stepping in, you know you’re entering another world. Your senses are bombarded with ancient perfumes. Horses have a honeyed scent. Their dander and fine hairs float with dust moats that love to dance in sunlight angling into the dim, like fishing lines, all the shadowed hours of the day. Their breath is, for us who worship them, like heaven’s promise – never bitter – always true.

Underneath that base line sniff you might note straw or shavings – wet with bitter urine and the odd baked soar-dough of horse manure (if your there in the morning before mucking) or later, after clean up, it’s all fresh sharp sawdust – or clean straw that has no smell at all, like buckets of fresh water just hung the corners of every stall.

From the tack room, to your left might come a subtle waft of old, well maintained leather, mixed with saddle soap and preservative oils. There’s burlap and rough twines, and if you breath deeply and hold it, you can just detect a hint of Gentian Blue once dabbed over a hoof to cure a case of thrush or even a tinge of the a hidden sliver of trimmed hoove the dogs forgot. Taking another step in… you breathe oats. Honey, sweet oats. And if you really pay attention, there’s a pale waft of spiderweb silk trailing, like Spanish moss or weird grimy icicles a-dangle.

But over all this, a harmonic sweet cloud hums in the air above your head, from breathing bales and bales of grey-green, prickly, dried summer’s meadow. Hay.

The drawing above depicts a memory of a late September morning in 1972. The farm house I grew up in is empty there and then. I woke up early, rolled my sleeping bag and walked into the bare kitchen with it’s fridge door ajar, like a dumbfounded white fool. And all the cabinets, washed and drying, awaiting the next inhabitants stuffs. They gape and draw my attention like a troubled missing tooth.

I lean over the old, bleached, bright porcelain sink and take a long drink straight from the tap. It’s the sweetest water in Montgomery County. Come up from the deep artesian well through zinc pipes. The well’s never gone dry in 22 years and more. Originally, according to County records, this place was first called, “Cool Spring Level.” But this well will soon become obsolete, as the entire town is shifting over to city water and sewer. Times have changed and I’m not ready.

Taking a deep breath I walk myself out through the echoes, shoes in hand, over the cool slate of the screened porch. The door slaps shut behind me. I stuff the sleeping bag and shoes into the back of the old impala. Not ready to leave, I wonder out to the barn. Hollowed out now too, like a giant white pumpkin. Julep’s stall is deathly still. I dream I see her turn her dark head and blazed nose to greet me with her immense eyes welcoming. Mom gave her away to friends weeks ago. She is only 30 or so i think to myself. She’s healthy and definitely has a few more good hacking years in her. But I can’t imagine my life without her. If a horse can be a bodhisattva, she is one. The relationship between a horse and rider can be incredibly intimate. It stung my eyes like smoke to see that vacant stall. It just wasn’t right.

I moved past it like jumping a flame and grabbed the first smooth rung of the ladder to the hay loft and hosting myself up and up and into a dim world of barren floor and eaves that I had never known before. Even here I find the devastating vacuum of open space. The loft had always been heavy with hay. I’d never seen it cleared end to end and was stunned by this unexpected open capacity – for what I couldn’t say.

The boards shone gold, polished by decades of standing and moving hay bales – here, only covered by a flimsy scattering of loose and curled stalks, lifting in morning air passing through this long flute of space, sounding a note I strain to hear.

I walk over to the sunlit hay door overlooking the drive where, I was told, I took my first steps.

I sit myself down – legs heavy and dangling – bare toes wiggle over my known, old world and I wait, never wanting to go. I think, this is like when I learned to patiently wait for the horses’ water buckets to fill. There’s that dreamy attention, a conscious contact with the kind of peace one needs never rush from, but could just let the water overflow….and flow…forever. And so I sit, ready, yet waiting, unable to say the word, farewell.