Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Powderhouse

A small cement building with a curved roof and doorway, hidden among overgrown weeds and daisies.
The old Tecumseh Mine's Powderhouse

This photo comes to you from one of my recent adventures: exploring the old Tecumseh Mine with the infamous Copper Country Explorer. These old mines are really surreal -- huge amounts of poor rock spread all over the place, not in piles, but in huge fields.

One of our other finds was this old powderhouse. It is a poured cement building with a curved cement roof, hidden among the overgrown weeds and flowers. This building would have been used to store explosives (probably black powder) used in the mine. It sits here all alone next to an old trail, slowly being taken over by nature.

3 comments:

Laura Smyth, Publisher and Creative Director said...

Love this image.

Summer said...

I don't know why, maybe it's just my mood today, but this photo, though gorgeous, is more than a bit haunting. If it were taken at pre-dawn, or converted to darker tones, I might even find it truly melancholy. Reminds me of part of Tennyson's tribute to his dead lover:

Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,

A hand that can be clasp’d no more–
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.

He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro’ the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.

DC said...

@Laura: Thanks!
@Summer: Gosh dang it, you and your ideas... now I want to go back out and try it again at sunset! :P