The Hacienda

One of those rare, rare days today.

I've been to this abandoned hacienda-style outpost near Forres three times now and each time it reveals wonder and beauty. The first time was after a visit to the Knocking Tree (photos to be uploaded soon), a huge redwood-like tower shooting up 70 feet from the middle of a single-track road. The top was shorn off by a lightning storm sometime (google can't help you, or me, on this) and the bark is almost soft, permeable, so that you can knock on it and it sounds hollow.

The second time to the hacienda was on Sunday where my folks and I walked around, stepping over serious mounds of pigeon guano and exploring nooks and crannies. I took a few shots that 100ISO film and my shitty Minolta did no justice to. I had an interview for a photography course on Monday, and had thought I could get by with a brief flick through the Japan shots to use for a portfolio, but the interview process called for shots of your surroundings. I've often thought there's nothing worth shooting around here, but that defeatist (and frankly silly) notion has gotten me nowhere, and is a constituent part of my belief that all my good photography was torn from me by the neon and madness of Osaka, but the hacienda experience (round III) kicked that, and me, in the ass.

Being dropped off with my bike and a 10 kilo slab of photo gear on my back, I loaded the two cameras with film: 200 Fuji for the Dynax 8000 with the sweet wide-angle 1,8; 400 Fuji for the workhorse Dynax 7, and began shooting. Being all alone in an abandoned building is reason enough for jitters, but the occasional fluttering of a pigeon escaping his bolthole above your head makes a steady shooting hand a distant hope. There was also a door banging shut at random intervals ("The wind, the wind", I kept telling myself) and the entire right side of building one is in darkness. Luckily, I had a 1,000,000 candle mantorch to light the way, and to provide some kind of ghetto slave/illumination. Unluckily, the fucker was not charged, so died after 3 shots of the 8000. I was getting a bit nervous.

This place is amazing. Seemingly over-run by pigeons, it spans an area around the size of a football pitch, with debris of long-forgotten farming equipment (a plough called "Albion" beside the garage, a scarlet-red old fire extinguisher in the barn, cracked mirrors and tarps in the outhouse). There's a lot of guano. What looked to be some kind of grain silo is packed six feet high with pigeon keech. I was wearing shorts, so when I rose from a kneeling position to set up a shot, 90% of the time there was a little pearl of dried-up shit on one of my knees. I found a dead pigeon or three, and a rat that was in an advanced state of putrefaction, having gone a kind of milk-yellow colour. I set up a piece of blue wood next to it and took a shot in one of the bedrooms, where the slats stick out like ribs through the fading wallpaper.

If the shit can be tolerated (and getting used to the pigeons takes all of ten minutes, a hunched stance and a hooded top), this place contains gems that are not so much hidden, rather waiting to reveal themselves. After shooting a couple of rolls in the main building - and scaring myself a little - I walked over to the gatehouse, expecting the door to be locked. Unlike the one around the back, with the big warning exclamation on it that prevents you getting to the second floor, this one was unlocked. I walked into what could have been a real-world "When The Wind Blows" set. All the electrics had been ripped out of the kitchen, the bathroom fittings had been similarly dispatched, but the kid's bedroom still bore stickers and murals of Winnie the Pooh. All that was missing from the house was a human presence besides myself. It was heartbreaking and beautiful at the same time. I took seven or eight pictures. One of them was of a dying bee, its porcine body limping its last into a frond of spider web. It was a humbling sight. I watched it for a moment, gathered up my equipment, and pushed on down the road to the little church on the road out. There must have been someone who got a great deal on burgundy paint, as nearly every windowframe - and all of the outside clapboards of the church - is painted in this weird, blood-red burgundy. The clouds parted long enough for me to fire off the last two shots on my 8000, and I slung my gear on my back and headed for home.

It should have been an hour or so back, but I took a detour to Kinloss, where it started hailing, and my back was starting to kill from the two cameras, three lenses, flash and mantorch. I sucked down a banana between breaths. I couldn't stop thinking about the hacienda. I got home in an hour and a half or so, chafed but jubilant, then walked the 2 miles to the job centre and signed my little signature. I wanted to tell her about the hacienda, but I couldn't. I don't want anyone else to know.

I'll be posting some of the pictures on here once Boots fuck up the developing. I won't tell you where the hacienda is. You'll have to embark on that little escapade yourself. You might find a cigarette butt or two there. Take them with you - I forgot to.