I love barns. There’s just something about them that makes me feel warm and safe and calm. I think it might be because it brings about an idealized scene in my head that represents a simpler existence. A simpler way of being.
There was a period of time when I was dead set on being a farmer. I was a little kid, and my family was on our yearly vacation. We were driving through, I believe, Virginia, and I noticed a solitary barn in the distance, set a ways back from a beautiful farmhouse.
I announced that I’d love to be a farmer and live all the way out in the country. No one really took me seriously. And after my mom told me how early I’d have to wake up to milk cows, my dream died a little bit. It never occurred to me that I could simply grow crops and not raise livestock.
The longing was still there, though. I grew up on Notre Dame football, and my family tried to go to at least one game a year in South Bend, Indiana. I was obsessed with the actual game part of it, of course, but I almost equally loved the drive there. I had grown up in West Virginia, and as soon as the mountains started to flatten out in mid-western Ohio, I was transfixed. When we would enter Indiana on I-80/I-90, my heart would almost skip a beat.
No mountains were rising up around me. I could see as far as my eyes would reach. The trees in the distance were usually the vibrant colors of autumn, and the golden brown acres of harvest-ready corn spanning in every direction bent peacefully with each gust of wind. It was during those trips I fell in love with the Midwest.
I later attended college at Notre Dame, and my love for the Midwest only deepened. Whenever I was stressed or upset, I would get in my car, aim for the countryside—which wasn’t far away—and drive. Drive until I got lost. Drive until I didn’t know where I was anymore and all I could see were corn and barns and gravel roads.
It wasn’t loud out there. I could hear myself think. And I would always find my way back.
I stayed in South Bend for a while after I graduated, partly because of my love for the area. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere other than the Midwest. But not just any part of the Midwest. It had to be flat, and it had to be farmland. I had to see barns, and I had to see farmhouses. I wanted a gravel road within reach whenever I needed to drive and think.
It was during this time I started dreaming about becoming a farmer again. I was old enough to realize not all farmers had to milk cows, and I couldn’t think of anything that sounded like a better job than working outside in the wide open fields while planting and harvesting and riding on a tractor all day alone with my thoughts.
But there was a small glitch. A big glitch, really. I didn’t know the first fucking thing about farming.
I didn’t grow up in a farming area or in a farming family from which I could glean experience. I didn’t exactly have the educational background to make up for my lack of life experience, either. My English major and gender studies minor weren’t exactly helpful in this respect. I didn’t really know anyone well enough to shadow on the job, and my attempt to find one at the local farmers market was just plain awkward (but that’s another story for another day).
I was stuck. I wanted so badly to have a life I knew wasn’t a real possibility for me, and that was hard to accept. I’m the type of person who wants something and goes after it no matter what, so coming to terms with this unlikelihood wasn’t easy. But I eventually did, and I’ve come up with other dreams and other plans to satisfy my desire for a wide open space where I can think at my own pace.
One day, I hope to be able to own an old farmhouse in the country where I can go on weekends to think and write and relax. Maybe it will even have a big enough yard to necessitate the purchase of a riding mower, and using it will satisfy my dream of riding a tractor out in the fields. Maybe there will even be an old graying barn on the property, retired from full-time agricultural use but sturdy enough to serve as a storage unit.
Maybe. Hopefully. But in the meantime, I’ll continue my contemplative weekend drives onto unknown country roads that open up into areas I’ve never seen before, knowing I’ll always find my way back.
The Procrastinating Writer 