The house of meeting

There was a time when a group of congregants regularly gathered in this building to find faith and encouragement to continue on with their lives in the harsh environment of Door County, Wisconsin. Children likely gathered here to learn the three Rs. All that remains today are memories of the souls that once made this building a living part of a growing community. Somewhere along the way, the body faltered, declined and died. Like a body that has relinquished its soul at death, this structure now slowly returns to the earth.

New Year’s Eve dawned cold, gray and foggy in Door County, and I was returning from Sturgeon Bay, where I had taken some shots of the pier light and U.S. Coast Guard Station. I decided to leave the main highway and take a county road that cuts across the Door Peninsula to connect with a shoreline road to Egg Harbor, where my wife and I were staying. The road didn’t go where I thought it would, and for a while, I lost my bearings in the thick fog, wandering the back roads in search of the familiar highway.

My wanderings brought me to this building, which emerged like a ghost from the fog around me. I found myself proclaiming a low “Wow!” as it came into view. The snow and fog isolated this building and its surrounding trees and brush from the rest of the world, a haunting display of a building where lost souls once came to regain their bearings.

Photo blogging: Here’s looking at you Eyescapes is a series of photographs of human irises. It’s a project by Rankin, a London-based photographer and co-founder of the magazine Dazed & Confused (apparently, he’s cool enough to get by with only a singular name). What is striking about the series is the sheer variety of coloration and structure of the various eyes. The clinical becomes art. Take a look at Eyescapes.

Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2008 James Jordan.