The old barn in Chagrin Falls, Ohio

When Zalika stated the assignment today in class, an image immediately flashed in my mind, from way back in my childhood in Ohio. Funny, I have gotten to live in many lovely places since childhood, and have spent much time in special places here in Oregon, even being intentional in getting to know the details of my own backyard (literally). But I think a place can imprint itself on a person perhaps especially strongly as a child. So my place is the old barn at the back of my family's land, which was a couple acres of fields and woods in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, where I grew up. The barn was white with dark green trim, which is a traditional Western Reserve style. We had three scruffy horses and a barncat there most of the time. When we first moved to that place, when I was four, the barn seemed SO far away from the house, it was a big deal to run all the way there. To get to it, you walked barefoot from the house onto the skinny hard packed dirt path through the field, past the little apple tree where the groundhog lived. Then you slid open the wood gate, and balanced on some slightly tippy wood planks that were laid down over the muddy patch near the water trough, until you came to the split barn door with a rusty horseshoe nailed over it for good luck. Inside, the cement floor was cool on your feet, and you could get a drink of cold water from the pump and it tasted like iron. To this day I love the taste of water with iron in it. When I was a little bigger I went by myself to the barn a lot. There was a lot to do if you had a little time. You could smell the molasses feed in the bins, pet the cat, and go in the back to build forts in the haybales. If you waited very quietly until dusk, you might see the raccoon come out from its home above the tack room to steal the cat's leftover food. Or, you could go around to the backside of the barn, where the grown-ups didn't go because there wasn't a path.

This was a mysterious place even though it was just a few feet away. The back of the barn had once been larger but this part now was in ruins. It was in the woods. There were two pileated woodpeckers back there, and giant white puffball mushrooms the size of soccer balls. Our neighbor, Grandma Nancy, would sometimes come and pick the puffballs and slice them up into slabs and fry them, but I don't think my parents even knew about them. Down in the ravine behind the barn was a little old bridge wide enough for a horse cart and the remains of an old road, its original destination lost, obscured by trees and brush. Under the bridge were natural deposits of thick, gray clay, good for making mudpies and little pots. I lost a rubber boot in there once, got sucked down into the clay. Once, my dad and Nancy's husband Ernie cut down a big tree back there behind the barn, and one of the great log slices got away from Ernie and went rolling down the hill, narrowly missing my dad. It seemed like it was place forbidden to the grown-ups.

Later on, when I was older, about 12, it was my chore to feed the horses every night by myself. My best friend and I would have sleepovers in the barn. On summer days we would ride the horses bareback down through the woods to the river. We would swim the horses in the river and eat a picnic lunch, out all day, crossing roads and exploring for miles. This was back before cell phones so our parents had no idea where we were, but we knew the countryside. On the way back, we might stop and pick wild grapes from the vine that grew on an old dead tree in the pasture, which was best reached from horseback. They had an amazing flavor but were also very sour so I would eat one and then spit it out. My parents moved when I was in college. I went back there a few years ago to visit, but it made me sad, as of course it was not the same. The barn was empty, with dead leaves blowing in the aisle. A barn without animals is not fulfilling its purpose. Fortunately my memories of it are strong.