Abandoned Farm, Friuli Italy
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Abandoned Farm
I don’t know how many of these old farm houses I’ve passed while driving around my home in Italy, but I didn’t notice them till this crisp day in September. These clouds were the first things that caught my attention, and while I was trying to negotiate a busy stretch of tree-lined highway, I kept glancing over at them; a glimpse, here and there through the trees. At one point, the trees fell away revealing a harvested field fully exposing the clouds in a grand sky.
There are times when I feel a photograph approaching. An upwelling sense of excitement, anticipation. So I was ready… and rewarded, as one of those glimpses, registered a fully formed view of these clouds seemingly emerging from this hulk of a 19th century abandoned farm-house. Though abandoned and in varying states of decay, these stately structures, give testament to a slower time when man and beast worked side by side in the fields. But I wasn’t on a horse or carriage pulled by one, I was in a speeding rental car!
Over the years I’ve learned that fate has a role in being able to capture a photograph, and resign myself to the fact, that, at times, an image will be mine alone to enjoy on the walls of my mind or shared in a story as one that got away.
But damn it, this was not going to be one of them!
So I quickly swung off the road, put the car in reverse and backed up along the shoulder, while being screeched, barked and beeped at by a succession of animated Italian tailgaters. Finding my way back to the spot of the “fully formed view”, apologizing, I quickly jumped out of the car grabbing my camera, put it to my eye and proceeded to slip and roll down the roadside embankment, stopping inches from a plunge into the collected ditch water! Focused on my goal, I looked up from my prone vantage point and took this photograph.
Another thing I’ve learned about fate is that sometimes, it can make you look like a character from a Roberto Benigni skit!
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Brings images to mind from Under the Tuscan Sun – even’tho’ it’s not Tuscany – and stirs the wanderlust in me. Molto bello.
Grazie Bruce! The reference is apt but Bramasole was at least livable, this one, not so much…
Beautiful capture and I so enjoyed your story!
Thank you Shannon!
You? Unruly? I can’t picture that!
It appears that you saw one thing and, when you stopped to look at it, even more came to light. Runs along the trail of not being able to see the forest, for the trees and/or seeing the world in a grain of sand.
Nice shot!