It has always puzzled me why there are so many derelict and abandoned houses in rural areas of Lithuania. It's a small and beautiful country but the population, except for towns and cities, is pretty much scattered. Young people do not want to live in the remote places where their fathers lived . Inevitably, the old ones stay, unwilling or unable to move elsewhere, until merciless time takes them away.
During one of my trips to the Alytus Fortified Region I came around a dream-like place: a pond hidden behind a tree-covered hill, an old wooden house - already in a state of disrepair - and a new, modern two-storey house just behind it. An old man, apparently living there alone, explained that he had build the new house for his children.
"But they are living abroad now" he said, "and they are not going to come back".
"Why don't you move to the new house then? The one right here?" I asked.
He glanced back at the old wooden house and then, with that strange expression on his face, a mixture of sadness and defiance, said:
"Because this one my home."
Will I ever meet that old man again when I'm there one day? Or all I will see will be the nature claiming back its share like here on the photo? Will he tell me some old story or it will be just the wind blowing there through the broken windows?
In fact the photo you see was taken just several hundred meters from the old man's place.
I don't know who lived there.
This photo is
Best on black at Fluidr
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