Two views of a Barn

I went off to the mountains today to do some paddling. My canoe has been on my truck since the Old Forge outing but hadn't seen water yet except for raindrops. I decided it was time so I headed for Cascade Lakes and did a turn on Lower Cascade before heading further South to Chapel Pond. I happened by this barn at lunchtime. It is by a popular turnout in Keene Valley and there was a guy selling hot dogs, sausage, etc. so I stopped for lunch. He was a native of the area and we had an interesting chat. He told me that there used to be a gas station/convenience store/diner at that location years ago. The barn belonged to the people who owned the gas station and the field by it was their hay field. I'm not sure why a gas station/store/diner needed a hay field and he didn't explain except to say that they used the barn to store the hay.

He also said that the clump of trees in the middle of the field (behind and to the right of the tree) was there because it was an Indian burial site. Even when the land was in private hands (it's now state owned) the owners weren't permitted to use that part of the land because it would disturb the burial site. I have photographed this barn and the tree clump many times over the years and never knew its history before.

I liked the sky and the way the tree framed the scene so I made the above photo. As I was shooting it the hot dog man (I didn't get his name) told me that the better view in his opinion was up the road a bit to the right. I'd shot both views before but wandered up that way to see how it looked today and made the photo below. I was violating the "don't shoot between 10am and 3pm rule since both of these were shot around 12:45pm but the sky was good so I went for it. Truth is, I don't pay much attention to "rules" anyway.

The mountains behind the barn in the bottom photo are Porter (tallest just right of center) and Cascade (last bump on the right). Cascade is actually a higher mountain but it is farther away from this angle so Porter appears to be higher. The mountain seen directly above the peak of the barn in the top photo (the one with all the patches of bare rock) is Pitchoff. I hope everyone had as nice a day as I did.