Growing up in Virginia, I used to take many walks into the woods near our house. I had many adventures in that place, just me and nature. It was on one such excursion that I stumbled upon a curious surprise. An old, collapsing cabin. No roads, no neighbors, just this ancient home dropped in the middle of a large wood. It was certainly mysterious, showing no signs of life for many years. But it did have more than first met the eye. Since the day I discovered it, I spent many a day journeying back and finding treasures, the old things that once belonged to its tenants. It was like being let in on a secret, the home life of nameless families, with clues to their lives that were at the same time tangibly concrete and impossibly esoteric.
I have always had an intense fascination with old, broken down things. Whilst in Ohio, I loved driving by barns, houses and factories that had long been out of use, imagining what sorts of things happened in those places, the people that lived there, then reflecting upon the relentlessness of time, the inevitability of decay. And this, I suppose, contributed to why our basement so intrigued me.
