The Richness, The Beauty, The Petch House

I find beauty everywhere and I found beauty in the Petch House that once housed many families here in Aurora grounds. An old decaying log house now embraced by nature is standing alone and waiting for the day that will be alive again.


Days are passing by and the process of natural and yet accelerated decay is taking over. The deterioration from the last time I visited the property is more prominent. Everything with time is decaying. It is a natural process and cannot be stopped, but it can be slowed down.


Nature took over. Nature embraced this little log house and added unprecedented natural beauty. It is now home to squirrels, birds, ants and many more. Why not? Survivors will seek shelter. It’s there and it is serving its purpose as it once served purpose a long time ago providing a shelter to many families.


Tiny, tiny plants are growing on the logs and feeding on the nutrients from the deteriorated logs, once trees. A fundamental principle in physics states that mass is conserved, it cannot be created or destroyed, thus with the help of sun energy, moisture and the wood nutrients, a foliage is now carrying the Petch house history within. The cycle of life will continue, and this property will be forever marked.


Let the Petch house be a nutrient to our community. I think it is misunderstanding when one says history will repeat itself. Absolutely not in my opinion, history is irreversible. The moment I take a photo of something, it becomes a snapshot from the past. As much as I will try very hard to duplicate exact, it is nearly impossible. Everything may look the same, but the time is different.

Let us think about this – the differences in history now and history then. The art of making, building, producing or manufacturing of everything around us has accelerated exponentially with advancements in technology. We don’t think about it, but every minute millions of millions of everyday items are made mechanically. Skilled trade is fading. The art of making is fading. House made today is just another production house.

It may take 1000 years and not 100 years for the simple family house built today to gain a historical value. Not to mention, because everything is built so fast, it can have the same fast down fall, thus never to be of historical value. Only the giant architectural structures will be in front of line in our future history books, but what will that represent in our society.

Sometimes we think of history as dates and events. But history is in everything and is part of our lives. We learn from mistakes. Mistakes are past, mistakes are history. History is our teacher.


How this house could possibly be a nutrient to our community? The answer is simple, over many generations it preserved family values. The house was built with love and with intention to raise a family. It endured happiness and sadness. In those days, the sole goal of the family was to survive by building a shelter and farming to put food on the table.

Look around you today – do we have the same intentions. Our shelters today hardly ever are passed on from generation to generation. Our ‘ready’ food on the table comes from a local supermarket packed and cooked and ready to be microwaved. Our houses are filled with objects that are not unique anymore; they are really one of the millions and millions of things produced. In my eyes, the Petch house is a representation of stability – something our community and society lacks and needs today. Let us then learn from the history – from Petch families and their traditions, let the house be our example.


What else can we learn? Few evenings ago I visited the Petch house for the third time and aftermath my head was filled with thoughts written here. It was a beautiful sun set on the horizon and the direct shine on the Petch house helped me to uncover the little things one may not see it at first glance – the age of the logs and art of making them. The age rings of the tree are very prominent and their age can be approximated. The center of the ring being closer to the edge shows that tree was first split into two halves and then each was squared.


Can you see that I am hooked, but I am not the only one out there? The media picked up on the efficient and strategic effort to save the house by The Friends of the Petch House. More history is being uncovered as per their recent post Petchville Treasures and my previous post Inventions From Aurora, Plow Attachment By J.A. Petch. The house has rich history as it is unvailing in front of our eyes, and don’t forget the beauty. The intricate patterns and textures on the Petch house can really captivate the eye of the observer, but that is a story for another time.