As a kid I delighted to discover an abandoned house in the woods.  In my imagination I pondered about the lives of those who had lived there.  Sometimes signs left behind, were clues to what they cared about.  Moreover the condition of what remained served as a rough indication of how long the place had been abandoned. 

Several days ago I returned to the Kane County Forest preserve on the east side of the Fox River, the site of the old Fabyan estate in the early 1900s.  According to the records it was a thriving farm with over a hundred employees, part of the estate of 300 some acres.  I suspected more “ruins” were to be found since the land was occupied and intensely cultivated by our late industrial age ancestors. 

These are the photos which I captured while walking through the woods.

As Rome fell into disrepair graffiti artists took advantage of conditions, a result of an absence of attention, and a lack of funds to keep infrastructure in good repair.  Is there a better act of resistance, to show your contempt for “the man” than to leave your mark on a public surface?   “Virgula to Teritus: You are a nasty boy,” can be read by archeologists on a wall of ancient Pompeii.  There are other inscriptions of hardcore lewdness… 

A walk in the woods is natural for meditation.  The path well defined, was well trod by others — a silent witness that many have come before me.  Stepping off the path I decided to follow a dry, broad rocky creek bed which would have drained storm water from the Fabyan farm fields.  Massive old trees stand in this forest.  A photo cannot capture the essence of a tree which towers perhaps a hundred feet into the sky.  A fiery orange mushroom attracted my attention as did a shelf or bracket fungus growing on a felled log.  Decay which follows death supports life.  Could we say this is another form of life?

Most photos are of graffiti on the concrete walls of the structure created to channel the creek water under the roadway of Route 31.  I found walls, sections levee-like, now broken, collapsed into the creek.  Nature will win out over human artifacts no matter how robust the design, how permanent the intent.  My discovery of, and viewing of the ruined walls was yet another reminder:  Memento Mori.  Or said in plain English: Remember you must die.  The old Stoics as well as the Buddhists made a philosophy out of that insight.  One could do worse.

I walked as quietly as I could returning through the woods.  A young deer passed in front of me not ten feel away.  The animal did not appear to have seen me.  The near sighting of the deer was a bonus to my walk in the woods.