The Barn

A disturbing dream the other night featured something I have not thought about in many years, a barn that sat on the property where I lived for a time in New Hampshire. It was old and appeared decrepit, its tin roof, added sometime in the 1930's, sagging with the weight of accumulated years and its boards gaping with cracks and checks that let in the daylight. That is where our cows and horses lived when not in the pasture, where the turkeys, chickens and barn swallows strutted or flew about, and where the hay was stored.

Underneath the crumbling facade of the old barn was an imposing structure built of massive beams and posts, some sixteen inches on a side and forty feet in length, all carefully fitted without the use of a single nail. To the passing visitor it looked derelict and some may have wondered that we would risk our animals to its harbor, but the barn was as solid as the day it was built. It remained as such until a day when rotting wooden floorboards made it unsafe for the animals and humans alike, when the sagging roof had fallen a few more inches and threatened to cave altogether. The cost of repair was high so we mended it as best we could year after year, until the time came when we could no longer.

Wisdom should have guided us to preserve and fix the wears of time, but it was a project well beyond our limited means, and so with regret the old barn was sold to a company that paid a handsome price for the coveted structure. They intended to reclaim the siding for the interior of a restaurant, but the real prize was the structure itself. And once the decaying roof and siding were stripped away the old barn timbers stood proudly, a testament to those who had fashioned it, according to a date inscribed on one post, in the early 1800's.

Piece by piece workmen carefully deconstructed the old barn. They told us it had been sold to a wealthy individual who planned to incorporate its pieces into a new home somewhere downstate. It gave us a little comfort to know the barn would live on, that its beams would stand for many more years, though we mourned its passing. And once it was gone, and centuries of sawdust and manure, hay, and soil plowed up and graded, we sowed the plot with seed. Where once our barn had stood there was now a gap, a missing tooth in the landscape that never felt right.

Eventually, we built a new barn with the proceeds from the sale and it was serviceable but lacked the sense of place that had endowed its predecessor. Even the livestock seemed to sense something was lacking, and they never quite adjusted to their new home. Neither did we. There was nothing to admire, nothing to ground or to humble us and convey what the old barn represented, history, a long since forgotten sense of pride in a thing well built and the patience of its framers. The barn could not be recreated, no trees that stood on our property would ever again offer the height and girth, the stature of centuries old growth.

In my dream, the lesson of the old barn was clear. Beneath its aging exterior was a still mighty and purposeful structure, one that had stood for over 150 years, serving its occupants well right up till its end. We were too quick to tear it down, to condemn what was still vital and strong. Perhaps you'll think me crazy, but that old barn represented a connection to our past and a reminder that behind the facade were things worth preserving.

Like the old barn, our country is being torn down before our eyes. Board by board, plank by plank, our laws, our foundations, our very Constitution are being stripped away and discarded as crumbling relics. We are told it is in the interest of a return to greatness, that all will be replaced by something new and better, but we can see for ourselves that the facade being created is insubstantial. What stood for 250 years and served us through wars, crises of conscience and catastrophe is being cast aside. Will anyone reclaim what so many sacrificed to build, or will we wake up one day soon to a ruin, a pile of debris where once a mighty structure stood, a place of refuge and hope? The words of the poet, Langston Hughes, echo in my ear, "Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly."