Sunday, October 27, 2013
Pine Buff, Arkansas

While tooling down a nice gravel road running between the Arkansas River and the base of Petit Jean Mountain, my peripheral vision served me well as I spied an old barn in the woods.  Teetering on its last legs, the barn is west of Morrilton and northwest of Oppelo in central Arkansas — in that order if you are approaching from the east. Closer inspection revealed that the barn was missing four walls. The roof, however, was standing tall, despite being in a poor second place in a losing battle with time, weather, and gravity.

Down the Bore

As you look at the lonesome roof right down the bore, it appears to have had the old tablecloth trick pulled on it.  Time to scratch the noggin some more.

I scrambled and scratched my way through some nicely thorned, wait-a-minute-vines to set up the tripod in an advantageous position, but then decided I wanted to change lenses.  Of course the lens I wanted was back in the truck.  Back through the vines.  On the way back, mother earth reached up to meet me.  After a quick recovery and an observation of thanks that I was sans audience for the crash, I proceeded to start the snapping procedure.

I continued the shoot.  I started to wonder what had happened to the walls.  It occurs to me that a building of that size would have had more than a modicum of board feet tied up in walls, yet no such detritus was visible.

Up-Close Strangeness

The closer you get the stranger it becomes.  Perhaps Houdini was reincarnated as a lumberthief.

Though we are curious, we will probably never solve the mystery, which will not cause any lack of sleep.  Perhaps this will be a good thing to remember the next time we encounter a curious and unexplained, yet inconsequential phenomenon.

Clarity on the Mountaintop

Upstairs, at the top of Petit Jean Mountain, there is no mystery.  All is revealed.

Meantime, topside, some eleven-hundred feet or so above, the view from the Petit Jean overlook was spectacular, the sort of thing that makes one forget about unexplained, yet inconsequential phenomena.