Fiction in the Fields

One of the charms of heading out into the countryside without a set route is that you never quite know what you'll stumble upon.

It all began once with a lonely abandoned tower on the edge of a village lost amidst endless fields. I never did figure out what the tower was originally built for, but its geometry alone was reason enough to stop and reach for my camera.

Nearby, I came across something even more intriguing — a long-abandoned hippodrome. At least, that's what the sign insisted. Whether the tower ever belonged to the racecourse grounds is hard to say, but I see no reason not to weave these two structures into a single narrative — confidently enough, at least.

Why all of this fell into abandonment remains an open question.

Perhaps horses simply lost out to modern transport.

Or perhaps the final victory in the long-standing rivalry between different paths of agricultural development went to the livestock farm located nearby.

I have no evidence to support either theory, of course. But my stories rarely require any.

Southern Urals, Russia.
April, 2020.
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