# <center>A house that hadn't changed</center>

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## Once, after almost a decade of being away, I returned to a house in the countryside to spend a night. 
It was the house of a good friend who had built it many years ago in a small clearing on top of a pine-covered hill at the base of the Adirondack Mountains in Upstate New York. Almost nothing had changed about the house or the land around it. 
 
The house was still in great shape. The pines behind and around it were still tall, lush, and green. The lands beyond, which I couldn’t see from the house itself, were still rolling meadows and farmland. The defunct and rusted tractor that marked the turn onto a still unpaved Rabbit Road was as it had been years ago, defunct and rusted. Across from the tractor, on the other side of the street, horses and goats continued to occupy a shamble of stables and pens. To me, they looked like the same horses and goats that had been there ten years before.
 
That night, I spent the night in a room I had once spent many nights in. The bed was the same. The blankets that covered it were the same. The books on the bookshelf to the left of it were the same. Even the pictures on the walls and the nearby dresser hadn't changed, and the rocking chair at the foot of the bed seemed like it hadn't moved at all. 
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## It being late July, I slept with the windows open that night.
Already, the air was cool, at times chilly. It smelled fresh and slightly bog-like, just the way that it always had. Through the windows that stood at the foot of the bed, I could see the moon shining bright. Its light slipped out from an opening in the clouds whose edges looked as if they had been cast in silver. From this opening, a silver veining spread out into the night, giving definition to the shapes that were there, hidden in the blackness.
 
Just as I began to drift off into sleep, a sound that I hadn’t heard or thought of in many years began to ring out and echo through the hills and the land beyond. It began with a single, tentative *Yip*, and then built, hesitantly at first, into a series of cries until ending in a series of long howls. Soon, more yips and howls joined in from various points in the valley and hills beyond, a chorus of calls and answers ebbing and flowing.
 
This, too, was no different than it had been when I stayed here many years before. Yet, something was strange.
 
I had traveled a long way and had been gone a long time. I was now living on the other side of the world. When I returned, though, it was as if I had never left. Conversations began where they had left off. I fell back into sync with the movements and rhythms around me effortlessly. 

But there was something about the calls of the coyotes. Hearing them yipping and howling, roaming around in the cover of night, somehow sounded different to me, almost unnatural. Their calls  made the room around me feel foreign. 

And suddenly, it was as if I had come a long way to a distant, exotic land. 
 
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***Once*** is a series of micro memoirs inspired by a [book of the same title](https://www.amazon.com/Wim-Wenders-Once/dp/1935202286) in which Wim Wenders, the German filmmaker, uses a combination of photographs and text to reveal what he considers to be the beginnings of untold stories, which he encourages his readers/viewers to complete.
 
Similarly, I offer these moments of my life to you as if they were not my own, as if they were in no way connected to me, which in many cases they no longer seem to be. I encourage you to consider these moments as beginnings, beginnings of stories or travels that you are free to write, live, or complete as you see fit.
 
<center>Previous ***Once*** Post:  [A Bike Trip In Japan](https://steemit.com/travel/@boxcarblue/once-a-series-of-micro-memoirs)</center>
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If you enjoyed this post, please also consider reading my ***This Is Japan*** series to learn about everyday life in Japan as seen, discovered, and experienced through the eyes of a foreigner. You can read my latest post here [Festival Season](https://steemit.com/travel/@boxcarblue/6t16eu-this-is-japan).
 
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<center>**Image Credits:** *All images are original.*