He’s walking along slowly across the street holding a book. Glancing down from time to time, then squinting up and staring at our galleries. He doesn’t notice Kata and me in the shade of her awning enjoying the breeze on this hot day.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
He jogs across the street open book in hand. “I’m looking for this building.”
He points to a photograph in a weathered old book. It’s an historic record of buildings in Amador County. The pages are brittle and falling out. The building is clear: Wells Fargo.
“From what I can tell it should be right here.”
Jeff is a photographer. In 2021 he started driving highway 49 recreating photographs from one chapter of an obscure 1948 state bulletin Survey of Building Structures of the Sierran Gold Belt - 1848-70.
He paused the project in 2023 and is getting back to it as of today looking for buildings in Volcano.
Kata gets up. “Let me show you something.”
We walk down the short alleyway between our two creaky wooden buildings and peer over the balcony to the mass of brush and bramble below and behind us. Kata points out that there is an old stone foundation down there.
There’s also an old dry erase board that must have fallen down a few years ago and some other odds and ends that fell through the cracks of the shaky wooden railing.
“That must be it.”
“What do you do with the photographs?” I ask.
Jeff has a blog, Revisiting the Motherlode Highway. He puts up the original picture alongside the current one and then writes about the building and his experience. As he puts it:
"For those buildings I have found, it has been the joy of a treasure hunt... [and] any stories I may come across... that tell the story of these white whales."
I wonder what he’ll write about the Moby-Dick in our backyard!
Kata is still standing there lamenting the brambles.
“Maybe I should talk to my goat guy and see about cleaning that mess up.” I offer.
“But how do you make sure they don’t escape?” Kata’s already bracing for disaster.
“They put up electric fences. I can’t imagine this would take four goats more than a few days to devour. I don’t know if he does jobs that small.”
We’ll find out.
In the meantime it’s almost August and these two Leos need to plan a birthday celebration and clean out the stuff being stored in this alleyway so we can have more room in the shade!
This made me smile this morning. Please post photos of the goats! xoxo