Haven Farm

[Cord Hurn]

I've imagined the dirt road to Haven Farm as looking something like this, minus the grating:

[Cord Hurn]

This isn't quite how I have pictured the Haven Farm house, but it's close. Wooden, rather small with just two bedrooms, chimney connected to fireplace (excellent spot for burning unwanted novels!), with woods starting about 3/4ths of a kilometer away behind the house:


Still, I can't imagine Thomas Covenant caring about having the bushes cut to a rectangular shape, and he doesn't seem like the type who likes to use a rocking chair. It's not easy finding a picture that matches the story description perfectly.

[Cord Hurn]

Righters Creek in the woods behind Haven Farm, where Covenant stumbles down a stony hill to rescue the snakebitten girl, may look a lot like this:

[DrPaul]

I've imagined the dirt road to Haven Farm as looking something like this, minus the grating:

That's very similar to how I imagine it when I re-read the relevant passages of the Second Chronicles.

[Avatar]

I always thought of it as being much more wooded.

--A

[Cord Hurn]

I always thought of it as being much more wooded.

Well, there's mention of a line of trees behind Covenant's white-colored farm house. The main problem I have with this picture fitting Haven Farm as seen from the asphalt highway leading into the nearby town is: the aforementioned grating, and that the road seems too long to be only a quarter-mile in length. But the area between Haven Farm and the nearest paved road is described as a field. To me, a "field' implies few trees or no trees.

For a week or so, he made progress. He paced through the charted neatness of his house like a robot curiously aware of the machinery inside him, searching despite the limited functions of his programming for one good answer to death. And when he left the house, walked out the driveway to pick up his groceries, or hiked for hours through the woods along Righters Creek in back of Haven Farm, he moved with an extreme caution, testing every rock and branch and breeze as if he suspected it of concealing malice.

But gradually he began to look about him, and as he did so some of his determination faltered. April was on the woods--the first signs of a spring which should have appeared beautiful to him. But at unexpected moments his sight seemed to go suddenly dim with sorrow as he remembered the spring of the Land. Compared to that, where the very health of the sap and buds was visible, palpable, discernible by touch and scent and sound, the woods he now walked looked sadly superficial. The trees and grass and hills had no savor, no depth of beauty. They could only remind him of Andelain and the taste of aliantha.

After a couple of miles, she came to a wide field on her right, thickly overgrown with milkweed and wild mustard. Across the field, a quarter of a mile away against a wall of trees, stood a white frame house. Two or three other houses bordered the field, closer to the highway; but the white one drew her attention as if it were the only habitable structure in the area.

A dirt road ran into the field. Branches went to the other houses, but the main track led straight to the white one.

Beside the entrance stood a wooden sign. Despite faded paint and several old splintered holes like bullet scars, the lettering was still legible: Haven Farm.

Gripping her courage, Linden turned onto the dirt road.

She could see lights from Covenant's house. The building lay flickering against the line of dark trees like a gleam about to be swallowed by the woods and the night. The moon only confirmed this impression; its nearly-full light make the field a lake of silver, eldritch and fathomless, but could not touch the black trees, or the house which lay in their shadow. Linden shivered at the damp air, and drove with her hands tight on the wheel and her senses taut, as if she were approaching a crisis.

[Cord Hurn]

The field before the house at Haven Farm is described as being a field of milkweed and wild mustard. Here's a milkweed field.



And here's a wild mustard field.



So, the field in the dirt road photo above doesn't quite match the color scheme of being milkweed and mustard--well, at least not when they are in bloom.

The only other descriptions I've found of Haven Farm and its environs are in the following passages.

Whenever the penury of his resources threatened him, he gusted out of his house like a lost wind, and scudded through the hills for miles up and down the wooded length of Righters Creek. And when he could not rouse himself with exertion, he lay down across the broken furniture in his living room, so that if he dozed he would be too uncomfortable to rest deeply enough for dreams.

There, on her right: the dirt road that served as Haven Farm's driveway. A quarter of a mile away beyond open fields, invisible against the wood which clustered around Righters Creek, stood the small farmhouse where Thomas Covenant had lived. Linden knew it well, although she had not been there for years. In memory she had preserved its rooms. Even now, with Jeremiah in danger and her nerves primed for battle, she could see Covenant's flagrant eyes as he had striven to prevent her from sharing his peril.

And there, not twenty yards from main road, lay the spot on which she had swallowed nausea and fear in order to save the life of the old man in the ochre robe--

--who had told her to Be true--

--and who should have by God warned her that Jeremiah's life was at risk.

Wheels skidding in the dirt, she drove toward the house through winds that gathered a tornado's force.

Then the scant reach of her headlights found one wall of the farmhouse. It had once been white, but over the years neglect had peeled the paint away to grey wood, and a few of the boards had sprung from their frame. No light showed in the windows: apparently the power failure covered this whole section of the county. Otherwise, she felt sure, Roger would have left every lamp lit here as he had in her home, welcoming her to his handiwork.
________________________

Her light traced the outlines of the door. It had no windows, offered her no way to see past it. Its panels had held their paint better than the wall, and that white made the door look somehow newer than the rest of the house, fresher: a portal pulled forward in time by recent use.
_________________________

From the kitchen another short passage led to three doors, a bedroom, the bathroom, and another bedroom. Her flashlight showed the way in splashes of illumination. Dark drops and smears marked the floor as if Roger had blazed a trail for Linden to follow to the end of the hall.
________________________

The woods twisted like a thrown ribbon among the fields of the county, following the crooked course of Righters Creek. Scrub oak, sycamore, and ivy crowded against each other along the gully of the stream. As soon as she had outrun the light of the burning house, she had to slow down. The wind or a fallen branch or a gap in the ground might trip her.

[Avatar]

Ok, probably not inaccurate. Not how I imagine it though.

--A

[Cord Hurn]

Ok, probably not inaccurate. Not how I imagine it though.

--A

My biggest problem with the dirt road picture is still that the road's too darned long.

[Cord Hurn]

This isn't quite how I have pictured the Haven Farm house, but it's close. Wooden, rather small with just two bedrooms, chimney connected to fireplace (excellent spot for burning unwanted novels!), with woods starting about 3/4ths of a kilometer away behind the house:


Still, I can't imagine Thomas Covenant caring about having the bushes cut to a rectangular shape, and he doesn't seem like the type who likes to use a rocking chair. It's not easy finding a picture that matches the story description perfectly.

I should add one more detail: Covenant's front door is described as not having any window, unlike the front door in this picture.

[shadowbinding shoe]

Interesting topic The farmhouse you posted, Cord Hurn, looks too pretty and too well maintained. I pictured something more like this:

Spoiler

[Cord Hurn]

I tend to agree with you. That may indeed be a better representation of the Haven Farm house, shadowbinding shoe, particularly when we're talking about how it looks in the Last Chronicles!