The Oregon State Fair

This week is also the Oregon State Fair in Salem. We went (yes, we go from one fun thing to another around here — that's how we roll, baby) last weekend, and it was so nice. The weather was absolutely perfect. We took the back roads to get there, like last year and the year before. The fields stretched out yellow across the roly-poly hills. Queen Anne's Lace and other late-summer wildflowers bloomed in the ditches along the old highway for mile after mile. The lavender clouds gathered and moved on.

I'm glad that the fairs happen at the end of the summer, during the crisp, yellow days. These days, the precious last ones, are the best part of the summer in so many ways. But I just don't know exactly what else it is about the fair that makes me so emotional. It's something.

I guess it's everything.

The fair always feels like an old dream, to me — a place I'd spent a thousand childhood afternoons imagining, a place I knew only from books, and pictures in books: strange but oddly familiar.

I was always sure that, if ever I got the chance, I would know exactly how to muck out a stall. Milk a cow. Collect a pale blue egg from under a ruffle-y feathered hen. 

I could shear a sheep and spin my own wool. I could braid a mane and tail. If someone would just let me, I could build my own bunny hutch, make clover salads and daisy chains.

 

Storybook stuff.

I am naive. I do know that farms are about hard work and food, both animal and vegetable, and that the Future Famers of America don't get to indulge in many fantasies about that, as we city girls do.

I know.

Kinda.

I still cried just a little bit in the horse barn on Saturday, while petting the soft, soft neck of one of my old friends.

It always sneaks up on me, somehow. That old longing.

About more than just a horse, no doubt.

You know how it is.

Comments

[Sarah]

Your photographs, as always, are fabulous.

[chook]

someday i'll have a little farm out in the country. and a horse. and a cow.

someday.

please pass the pie!

[Anja]

Yes I do :)

[Renee]

What a wonderful day. All my favourite things too, especially the animals and baking, preserves... all of it. Sigh. :)

[Barbara]

I agree.Beautiful photos.

[Cassandra]

I truly truly love the fair.

[Colleen]

HA! I LOVE that last photo! LOVE IT I tells ya! A beautiful post, Alicia. Thank you.

[rebecca]

I know exactly what you mean.

[Elizabeth]

great images of the state fair and imaginings and longings too.

[jenn]

your pictures and your writing are beautiful!

also, thank you for your post about sewing about sewing miles and miles and just putting in time on the machine. i'm fairly new at sewing and as i've seam ripped a lot recently, i've heard those words of yours i read ringing through my ears and i've been encouraged to keep at it. thank you!

[Kelly D. - ThreeLittleApples]

Yay! I love seeing pictures of other state fairs :) We just went to ours in Minnesota....

http://threelittleapples.blogspot.com/2009/09/great-minnesota-get-together.html

It's fun to see how similar they are. Love those pics!

[kay]

Beautiful pictures and I know....
What is it about horses that just touch some deep emotion and longing??

[Lori]

For me, anyway, it's the old timey nostalgia...that time in my memory from all my grandmother and grandfather's old stories, where things were simpler, calmer, and quieter...more peaceful and in some ways, happier. I think sometimes all these modern "conveniences" hurt us more than they help.

[mandy]

beautiful photographs what a wonderful day x

[Shelley (Pink House)]

I have wonderful childhood memories of the Oregon State Fair. And yes, it seems magical to me too. I wish our fair here was cool...but it's really not. More about carnies and corn-on-the-cob dipped in butter vats than about prize-winning pies and rabbits. Darn!

[jess]

Alicia, if you promise to come take equally stunning pictures of my horse, you can come braid her mane and tail any day :)

[Alice C]

I admire your writing so much - it doesn't seem to matter how many times you write about the same subject you still manage to look at it from a fresh perspective and make it sparkle. Thank you.

[lisa c]

Your writing is so romantic, old fashioned - I almost cried reading this. I know what you mean but it's unexplainable at the same time.

[ellen]

I haven't been to the fair in years and years..but your lovely post brings back such happy times when our two boys were in FFA and we hauled sheep and Jersey cows to the fairgrounds.
Sigh. Such a beautifully written post, thank you.

[Barbara]

The fair it brings back sweet memories and other than funerals it's one of the better places to see people you haven't seen in a long time. Thanks so much for taking us through each barn and enjoying the wares turned blue ribbons of some hard working soul on a yearned for farm.
You are a lucky duck, just traveling along I can almost taste the hot meals in the church tents as well as smell the cotton candy.
I loved it and just like the autumn there are times I crave it...
Thank you.

[sarah]

so wonderful! also, i'm curious to know if you and andy are watching hawthoRNe, since you love tv and he's, well, a decorated nurse!

[vivian]

I missed our county fair this year! but I do love the fair too! great post.

[Natalie]

Our county fair never appeals to me this way, but through your eyes I am enamored and enchanted.

[Betsy in California]

Yes, I know. I surely do.

[Janelle]

Oh, my. You know how to make a girl homesick.