Memorial Hunt - Jess

I gave myself the challenge of not picking a gravesite or other memorial of someone's life as the object of this exercise, and it's proved difficult . My mind automatically jumps to "Dead people!" when I think of the word "memorial" or "commemorative", so I'm trying to break free of that. Hopefully I'll be somewhat successful.

On the grounds of my apartment complex, there's a very pastoral wooded area and rolling meadows, along with a small pond, willow trees - - - all very lovely. A somewhat odd point of interest is this tiny log cabin, plopped in the middle of a field near the pond. An architectural non sequitur, if you will. 

Before my complex was built, there was a large farm on the grounds, and this cabin was on that land. According to the above plaque, it was built in 1870 and moved to it's current location in 1945 from another point on the property. It was then restored in 1979, and in the mid nineties, my apartment complex was built around this little cabin. Often, weddings are held adjacent to the cabin, and most of the time, residents can be seen picnicking at the tables and barbecue which are right next to the cabin as well. 

This site is serving multiple needs at one time. It serves as a pretty backdrop for exchanging vows, a laid-back spot to hang out, and also a catalogue of the complex's previous history as a farm. It's also a reminder to us of Bloomington's past, especially as the frontier marched westward. The plaque commemorates those who moved and restored the cabin, as well as the time in which it was built. By having this information, a more complete picture of this cabin's past comes into focus. 

Roach's article included a brief excerpt from an Alexander Pope poem, which "imagined the glorious deforestation of rural England":

"Thy Trees, fair Windsor! now shall leave their Woods,

And Half thy Forests rush into my Floods,

Bear Britain's Thunder, and her Cross display,

To the bright Regions of the rising Day." (Poems 1:189 - Roach, 9)

I'm fascinated by the myth of the West, the idealized images of the Frontier, notions of the white man as a "civilizing" influence upon the "savage" or "wild" native peoples (the flat out audacity and blind ignorance of European settlers at that time never ceases to amaze me). This cabin, to me, has echoes of that time. Now, 1879 was not 1779, certainly, but Indiana did not look the way it does now, 133 years ago. The cabin is a remnant of that time, and the memorial plaque commemorates it's exact place in time. The Pope poem invokes this idea of Man bending Nature to his will, of humans changing the face of the earth for their own purposes. The cabin required wood to be chopped in order to be constructed. A clearing had to be created for the cabin itself, if not already there in the appointed space.

The plaque is very simplistic, but it can evoke a commemoration of many different things, from the people who moved it, to the historical moment in which it was created.