The day was clear, the sky a deep midwinter blue. The December solstice just passed and the sun seemed reluctant to heave itself very far above the horizon. Even near midday the shadows were long and deep.
We are at Stagville, one of the largest plantations in the pre-Civil War South. Located in Durham County in north-central North Carolina. The holdings included over 900 enslaved people and 30,000 acres of land. Crops ranged from cotton to subsistence farming to tobacco.
An ancient walnut tree casts its tentacle-like shadow over one of the slave quarters at Horton Grove.
“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”
___Abraham Lincoln
The day is quiet and still. We are alone with the eerie, long shadows, and our thoughts. Imagining what life was like here a century and a half ago. Is that wood smoke I smell from the cook fires? Am I hearing spirituals in the distance being softly sung by the women? No, just the shadows of the past and my imagination.
:The light in winter is most varied; there are days when it’s clear and bright, carving the earth into light and shadow like a razor. Yet, at times, the light can be soft and quiet as a whisper…”
___Peter Fiore
Outbuildings, many falling into disrepair, are being reclaimed by nature. Are those the fingerprints of slaves we see in the chinking between the logs?
A plantation this size requires huge barns to house and feed the mules and store the equipment.
Life was good in the big house.
Though temporary.
“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape – the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show. “
___Andrew Wyeth
