Early in our Rosslyn adventure I struggled with how to share the story of our home and lifestyle reboot. As I mucked around, collecting and creating and curating content, I needed a temporary container until I could formulate a better plan. Rosslyn Redux was born. But it sprawled and grew unwieldy, so I met with book editors and agents to pick their brains. Dissatisfied with their advice (more marriage memoir than house/life rehab), I performed a live, one-man show instead. Because, why not?!?! I’d like to try that again. In the meantime I’m still exploring a project that eludes tidy explanation; still experimenting with unconventional, genre-bending storytelling; and still nurturing the sometimes flickering, sometimes flaring confidence that something meaningful and worthwhile will come of all this.
Although Redacting Rosslyn has evolved into a fourth theme, it’s really more of a meta look at our early choice to DIY this home rehab project, my subsequent choice to DIY this storytelling project, and all of the other bizarre developments that have fallen into place since I became as obsessed with how and why to tell a story in this digital age. It’s worth noting that the flavor profile for Redacting Rosslyn differs notably from Wanderlust to Houselust, Archeology of Home, Rehab Ad Infinitum, and Houselust to Wonderlust. It leans more toward indie authors and artists, makers, and the sort of independent (and inevitably stubborn) DIYers who’d rather figure things out for themselves. Think of it as an afterward that so far has evaded completion…
I’ve been reflecting a lot on vessels. Crockery, boats, homes, books, relationships, memories. And conditions. Conditions of vessels, the contents they’re asked to contain, and those of us who rely upon them, who contemplate them.
Broken & Unbroken (Photo: Geo Davis)
The vessel above, a burly bowl, reminds me of another, gifted to us by Pam, crafted from a burl collected by her late husband, turned into this delicate work of art by Ron Bauer. Like this one, that handsome sculptural addition to our morning room would appear better suited to straining, than containing. And yet this one, one of the few art and artifacts we retained from our time at the Lapine House, cradles a fractured sculpture. The small, fragile figure once sat on a windowsill in our kitchen.
Haiku
Broken & Unbroken
Discovered damaged, the fragments reassembled in a burly bowl.
Vessel
A tree burl is a boon born out of damage. A luxury born out of injury.
A burl is a strange-looking collection of tree cells, which are called callus tissue. Normally, callus tissue is formed by a tree in response to an environmental injury such as a pruning cut, disease, or insect damage. In forest settings, callus often arises from storm damage that has eroded away or deposited more soil around the tree’s trunk. (Source: Organic Plant Care)
A broken branch becomes a bulging burl destined to become a bowl. A vessel conjured into existence as a celebration of possibility, purity of form, beauty. Not for serving soup. Not for watering our Carley, our Labrador Retriever.
A damaged effigy shaped out of soft stone by will, whimsy, and chisel has — not altogether unlike the tree-turned-art — been injured, been offered an opportunity to become something different, something new. Currently cradled by a vessel with enough voids and gaps to appear useless, incapable of containing very much at all, and yet robust and relevant. Not just beautiful. Practical. A crucible.
Sometimes we call her the air traffic controller — calibrating schedules, inventorying and coordinating and unmuddling messes, managing myriad micros and macros, and multitasking Monday, Tuesday, heck, every day — also installing docks, feeding ducks and songbirds, soliciting bids and perhaps painting clapboard or pruning persimmons, brush hogging meadows, and welcoming travel guests. In short she is all this — air traffic controller, conductor, ringleader, emcee and referee — but also cheerleader, advocate, confidant, colleague, and dear-dear friend.
Primer, Painter, Polymath
Not my first Pamuela Murphy post, and certainly not my last. Susan and I recount our good fortune daily to share in this work, this journey, this life with a woman of such character and integrity, such persistence and problem solving, such strength and kindness. This preliminary piece of poetry is still germinating, still unfurling its precocious fingers and reaching toward the sunlight, toward springtime’s sweet awakening, the promise of a delicate bloom. With luck a clutch of blossoms soon…
High on my Adirondack Coast lifestyle list — my mental “Aren’t we lucky to live here?!?!” database of people, perks, and activities that add incalculable value to my existence — is bicycling backroads and byways from the shores of Lake Champlain to the Adirondack High Peaks. Sometimes solitary, sometimes accompanied by a friend, these pedal-power adventures through the Boquet Valley and rolling foothills, are like mini vacations, adventures concurrently familiar and exotic. From adrenaline pumping thrills to mellow meanders, shaded forests to bucolic farmland, breezy lakeside routes to stream and river crossings, the diversity of conditions, terrain, and landscape is captivating.
Often something catches my eye, and I stop to observe. An industrious beaver engineering a dam. A bald eagle breakfasting on a landlocked salmon. A team of draft horses pulling a blue shirted, straw hatted farmer through rows of crops, leaving a wake of disinterred weeds. A pair of young women, braids bouncing, executing a perfect jibe in stiff winds on Whallons Bay…
The bovine beauties above, photographed on July 22, 2021 (but visited frequently during my summer bicycle rides), are a poem unwritten. These gentle ruminants are a pair of wordless couplets, perhaps a hay chewing haiku, or a black and white ode to a sylvan sea. I suspect that, for each of us, the meter and matter of these roadside verses differ. We arrive at a moment like this with our own distinct experiential lens that distills our perception, that provokes our feelings, and that underpins our aesthetics. Each of us possesses a totally unique way of seeing. Sui generis. As distinct as our fingerprints. As our irises.
In the image below — the same photograph as above, albeit with color removed — the poetry is transformed. Same subject. Same context, background, composition, and framing. But the tone is not the same. The mood and the focus have shifted. Textures and tonal contrasts have replaced the richness and depth and vibrancy of color. The stark black and white figures in the middle no longer pop against a wide spectrum of greens and blues. They’re in harmony with the near infinite shades of grey that envelope them. The clouds have emerged from the chorus to deliver a spellbinding aria.
Bovine Beauties (Photo: Geo Davis)
Are you scratching your head and rolling your eyes? “Stick with cows in a field beneath overcast skies, please.” I understand the urge. There’s a comfortable ease in assuming that we’re all appreciating the same thing when we look at the photo, in allowing nuance to fall outside our frame of reference. Comfortable. Easy. But potentially misleading. Rosslyn reminds me time and again that reality isn’t as comfortable or easy. She has invited me, encouraged me, supported me in seeing that no matter how universal or congruent our perceptions, our ways of seeing are subtly (and often not so subtly) dissimilar.
One person’s bovine beauties might be another person’s dairy bar. Or they might be unnoticed altogether, just another blur on the periphery. A metaphorical garnish.
Chronicler or Artist I: waterfront variations (Photo: Geo Davis)
I really *should* post an update on our loft flooring “research”, copper flashing (aka drip edge) installation, east elevation gable window framing, revised drawings from Tiho that address a few outstanding items like column, stairway, railing, and other trim details (plus lighting, electric, and mechanicals),… But I’m going to postpone these already postponed updates a little longer to talk instead about a recurring subplot in recent months.
Okay, maybe it’s unfair to dub it a subplot since so far it’s defied definition. At heart it’s a grappling with mission. And permission. As I pour over sixteen years’ worth of memories and plans and artifacts and notes and photos and stories and poems and intertwined lives and ephemera there’s an inner struggle at work. Am I simply gathering the strings of a vast collection, curating its diverse snippets into a sort of chronicle, a history, a retrospective map? Or am I creating from these fragments something new and unique? Am I more of an historian or a mosaic maker? Am I chronicler or artist?
Chronicler or Artist II: waterfront variations (Photo: Geo Davis)
“He chooses; he synthesizes; in short, he has ceased to be the chronicler; he has become an artist.” — Virginia Woolf (Source: The Art of Biography)
There’s an inevitable tensions between the duty of stewardship and the affinity for storytelling and poetic truth. Between the responsibility to document important details for future Rosslyn homeowners and the creative freedom to explore textures and layers, melodies and harmonies, whimsical what-ifs and errant adventures.
But it’s more than this. It’s verisimilitude. Veracity…
I believe that there are different kinds of accuracy. I am a storyteller, not an historian, and though I strive for verisimilitude, some truths are more effectively preserved and conveyed through stories than history or vaults. (Source: Remembering and Recounting)
And so I pendulum between two muses, each jealous of the other, both second guessing, both casting aspersions.
Some days I toil like an archeologist amidst a midden heap of artifacts, rewinding time’s mysteries, deciphering the prior summer’s garden vegetables from this season’s rich, dark compost. Other days I seduce and charm and coerce the artifacts to share longer forgotten truths. (Source: Remembering and Recounting)
Chronicler or Artist III: waterfront variations (Photo: Geo Davis)
And there’s the not too subtle complication of recollection. My memory muddles — more of the composting variety than the austere archival variety — appreciating the possibilities of parallax, and grafting whimsical paisley’s onto sturdier scions to ensure that they survive the tempestuous toils of time.
I am startled to discover that these precise, unambiguous reference points frequently contradict my recollection. Dramatic events indelibly etched into my brain at the time have already blurred despite the brief lapse of time. I curse my mischievous mind and then accept that 100% accuracy will inevitably elude me. My mind’s imperfect cataloging at once humbles and liberates me. Though an unreliable historian, I am a chronicler and curator of stories, not facts. (Source: Remembering and Recounting)
So there it is. I’ve flirted with this truth before, and I double down today. Caveat emptor. Ask not of me the court stenographer’s unblinking authority. And I’ll not ask of you the jury’s verdict or the judges conviction.
According to Garcia Marquez life is not only the experiences, the moments lived. Life is also the rendering of those experiences into stories, the recollecting, the filtering, the imagining, the sharing. (Source: Remembering and Recounting)
Recollecting, filtering, imagining, choosing, curating, synthesizing, sharing,… This is the map I use. Chronicler or artist? Yes, but mostly the latter.
Perhaps even with history we become overconfident that the facts are irrefutable… Absent an omnipresent video camera that documents my life as I bump along, capturing every minute detail precisely, permanently, Garcia Marquez’s perspective offers reassuring guidance. Though I frequently daydream about a collaborative memoir comprised of the recollections of everyone who participated in the rebirth of Rosslyn, my story is an eclectic nexus of personal experiences, filtered, aggregated and cobbled into narrative cohesion by me. (Source: Remembering and Recounting)
Chronicler or Artist IV: waterfront variations (Photo: Geo Davis)
And yet the challenge of a dual mission permeates this 16-year exercise. There’s an inevitable tendency, a responsibility even, to document. To archive. To showcase. And there’s the omnipresent siren song of wonder and whimsy. While I still endeavor to provide a responsible accounting of our life, love, and toil at/with Rosslyn, I’m succumbing to the beguiling song of the sirens.
My quest for permission needn’t require such wayward roving. It is first and foremost my own consent I’m questing after. And part of accepting this is granting myself permission to embrace art above chronicle. I’ve suspected this. Dithered. Wondered. Worried. But this morning a confident confluence is flowing. And I’m ready… (Source: Quest for Permission)
Fair warning, then, while I dive into the reflective waters simultaneously mirroring the misty morning and revealing the pebbly depths. I’ll be back. Soon.
A few days ago I came across a provocative Facebook post that artistNick Bantock had shared on December 30, 2022. The date’s not particularly notable, but the author is. Familiarity with Bantock’s work adds context and texture to the explanation about his creative process, specifically how he moves from found ephemera to finished artwork.
I keep an in-between tank, a collection of part-constructed smaller pieces that are in a state of flux or transition. Resonating bits that touch or brush-up against one another, in a pre-morphing box (or in this case, a studio drawer)… Ideas are rarely plucked out of the ether, in my experience they come from creating an environment where happy accidents and surreal collisions can best occur. (Source: Nick Bantock, Facebook, December 30, 2022)
I’d be wise to leave his words to stand alone. Unsullied. Undistorted. Unaccompanied. A beacon.
And I’ll try.
But trying isn’t enough. Temptation is building, like a wave rising higher, gaining momentum, wisps of foam falling from the curled lip.
And so I succumb. Slightly.
Creative Collisions
The image above, an illustration of Rosslyn’s boathouse by Essex resident, Paul Flinn, was documented by Tony Foster. Between upcycling garapa decking boards into distinctive wall paneling for Rosslyn’s icehouse rehab he popped into Essex Town Hall, spied this handsome architectural sketch, snapped a photo, and pinged it through the ether to me.
Collaborating with creative characters; emphasizing the merits and possibilities of adaptive reuse while repurposing collected curios, salvage, and surplus; and generally endeavoring to create an environment where “happy accidents and surreal collisions can best occur” just might be working. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Tony.
Happy Accidents
Fusion. Collage. Combinatorial creativity… It’s been immensely satisfying to help catalyze the morphing. And it seems that everyday their are more happy accidents. They’re not all tidy or comfortable. Sometimes there friction and frustration. Sometime fission in place of fusion. But we’re in a flow state that, like an undertow and a strong surface current, are pulling us forward. Where? Too soon to say. But creative collisions and happy accidents suggest we’re trending in the right direction!
Bowtie & Broken Memento, January 25, 2023 (Photo: Geo Davis)
Bowtie & Broken Memento: Poem
Amidst broken memento
and fragmented hope,
fractured sculpture
and ruptured carpentry,
a bowtie binds bitter ends.
A patchwork harvest
of homegrown cherry,
felled and milled,
cured and crafted,
offcuts conjoined,
scrappy remnants
sewn in singalong,
cradling conversation,
cutlery, crockery,
and nourishment.
Sun soaked, finger
tipped tenderly,
inadvertently
in thought,
in conversation,
in fast breaking —
the only breaking
the bowtie abides —
there's comforting
contrast and real
reassurance
in an inlaid
joint pulling
the pieces
together.
Bowtie & Broken Memento: Afterward
Sometimes, as I shared with a friend the other day, a hug is more articulate than a hailstorm of words. The same is true with a passing shower, a mist passing over, passing through.
This draft poem is still prenatal. Preliminary. A furtive foray into the curious coalescence of still tender fractures and ruptures that drew me back to Rosslyn (and that continue to disclose themselves each day of my stay, reminders of quaking in recent weeks) but also the durable bonds and the abiding beauty that hold it all together.
I reflected on the shell in the photograph above (when still unbroken) in an Instagram post a little over a year ago.
Muscle shell “name tags” for seating arrangement at a wedding reception celebrating Elizabeth — one of Susan’s clever cousins — and Nick in Maine some summers ago. We were invited to keep them, so we did, and they’re now nesting in a maple burl bowl on our morning room table. This beautiful vessel was gifted to us by our friend Pam in memory of her late husband, Bob. He had gathered the burl from a fallen maple at Rosslyn, an immense centenarian, perhaps even a duo-centenarian, that succumbed to a windstorm, nearly striking the house. I watched it fall. Bob had intended to craft the character-rich burl into bowls, but his honorable journey was abbreviated prematurely, suddenly, tragically by the mysterious fates. Pam fulfilled his plans with the help of another friend, Ron Bauer, a local woodworker who built for us the black cherry harvest table upon which this burl bowl rests and where we eat virtually all of our Essex breakfasts and many of our lunches and dinners. Ron turned this bowl, and Pam presented it to us last spring, a year after she lost her husband. So much life and memory and gratitude resident in a few vignetted artifacts, a daily memorial, commingling the stories and characters and nostalgia and beauty that enrich even our most quotidian moments. This is the abundance and texture that invests a poetics of place. This is the “singing underneath”. This is the art of wabi sabi living… — @rosslynredux, October 3, 2021
Today I met with Ron to collaborate on a new table. We talked about bowtie inlays, turning burls into bowls, wood, joinery, and the unique cutting boards he has made for us out of this same cherry that once grew just west of the icehouse and that we gift to some of guests at ADK Oasis.
This evening I will hold in my head the memory of our conversation, a meditation on bowtie joints as well as other acts, art, artifacts that resist fragmentation and fracture. I will dwell on the humble bowtie instead of broken mementos.
A butterfly joint, also called a bow tie, dovetail key, Dutchman joint, or Nakashima joint, is a type of joint or inlay used to hold two or more pieces of woods together. (Source: Wikipedia)
Melancholy Boathouse (Source: Douglas Peden, Essex Studios)
Melancholy much? Yesterday I posted this achingly evocative image on the Rosslyn Redux Instagram feed with thanks to our neighbor, Emma, who gifted the vintage photograph postcard to us. It was a gift to her from Michael Peden who, in turn credited his father, Douglas Peden, as the photographer. Here’s an excerpt from my caption.
Sometime in the early days of the millennium, perhaps. The condition of the boathouse suggested it may have been a few years prior to 2005 when we purchased Rosslyn. Such ethereal longing and melancholy in this painterly rendering. Hoping to learn more about this evocative photograph…
It turns out that my conjecture may have been off by a significant margin. There’s still no definitive date for when this melancholy moment in Rosslyn’s history was captured, but some interesting insights have emerged.
I’d guess that it is much earlier than 2005 – probably before 1985. If nothing else, the front porch doesn’t have its roof, and I don’t remember it ever being missing. The lack of the dock doesn’t mean anything, because with the water that high you wouldn’t see it, anyway. — Jason McNulty
I don’t recall the porch roof ever being missing either. Quick check from photos I have shows the roof there in 1969 and again in 2004. — George McNulty
Jason and George McNulty, two of the previous owner’s sons, have suggested that I’m probably off in my estimate by at least two to four decades. And George McNulty also shared another photograph doubling the subjects of my inquiry: when were these photographs taken?
Rosslyn Boathouse (Source: George McNulty)
Melancholy Boathouse Revisited
I’m grateful to Emma, Jason, and George for kindling this inquiry. And, as it turns out, the initial photograph gifted to Emma by Michael Peden (and ostensibly photographed by his father, Douglas Peden) which was in turn re-gifted to me has catalyzed even more intriguing feedback and photographs from Jason McNulty.
Jason McNulty followed up on Douglas Peden’s photograph at the top of this post with some feedback from his father, George McNulty, Sr. from whom we purchased Rosslyn sixteen years ago.
Sorry, but I really do not remember about the date. A good guess would be about 30 years ago. The photograph was taken by Doug Peden. It shows the dock house after I had rebuilt the cribbing but had not started to replace the roof. — George McNulty
Jason amended his own thoughts and another truly unique photograph of the boathouse.
For what it’s worth, if you fudge some numbers a little, this roughly corresponds with a picture that you posted on your site showing the dock house with its roof nearly destroyed by flooding in 1983. Given my parents’ finances at the time, it could easily have taken a few years to replace that roof. I’ve also found a picture in my collection from roughly 1989 showing a clearly new roof. — Jason McNulty
Boathouse 1989, original un-enhanced photo (via Jason McNulty)
Spectacular cinematic image! I’ve taken the liberty of tweaking the levels, etc. to improve the detail of the boathouse, pier, etc. Here’s the adjusted and enhanced version.
Boathouse 1989, adjusted/enhanced for detail (via Jason McNulty)
I was curious about the photo’s provenance, also wondered about the boats, etc. Jason offered some helpful insights. Although he wasn’t certain who originally took the photograph, he felt confident that the year was 1989 (i.e. seventeen years prior to our purchase of Rosslyn.)
When I added the file to my collection, I renamed it and added the year 1989 to the name. I wouldn’t have done so if I was uncertain about the year, although I have no idea now why I was so confident then. As for the sailboat, it was my father’s second sailboat during my lifetime. It was fiberglass and this picture must be relatively early in Dad’s ownership of the boat since he didn’t wait too long to replace the outboard rudder with an inboard one. This boat eventually disappeared from its moorings with no explanation, although the aluminum mast was still in the barn for years later. The first sailboat was a wooden boat, possible yellow in color, that sank on the other side of the dock (parts of its frame can still be seen), and its mast is now the flagpole for the dock house itself. The rowboat was one of three or four that Dad designed and built using plywood. Growing up, I rowed it all over the shoreline, going at least as far the marina. Unfortunately, part of the reason that Dad had to make so many was that they kept rotting out. — Jason McNulty
Although I’ve wandered afield to be sure, my curiosity’s been awakened. I told Jason that I recollected him (or perhaps his father) telling me about the sailboat that sank. As a boater and a sailer, the tragedy etched itself into my memory. But, I told Jason, I didn’t realize that another sailboat had vanished as well. Mysterious. Might it also have sunk?
It might have, but I doubt that it sank at its moorings. It was tied to a buoy not to far away from the dock itself, and I’m sure that Dad did things like check to see if the rope was still there or whether there was a large white blur underwater. Besides, unlike the wooden sailboat, the fiberglass one didn’t leak. Beyond that, though, I’m not sure. — Jason McNulty
I’m aware that Rosslyn’s boathouse flagpole is their former sailboat mast. A perfect story instance of repurposing. And I have salvaged a few other pieces from the sunken vessel. But now my wonder wanders to the second sailboat that disappeared. Hhhmmm…
So many photos and field notes and punch lists, marked up plans, pruned and grafted scopes of work. This is the ephemera of construction and the detritus of rehabilitation. A midden of sketches and diagrams, souvenirs of collaborative problem solving, artifacts of alterations and adjustments,… this is the tangled and layered chorus we seek to distill and remix into an oasis. Some days the process almost approaches autopilot. Others it approach mes a multi vehicle pileup.
Field Notes (Credit: Geo Davis)
Although I’m as goal oriented as the next guy, as eager to complete the project as I was the day I started, I’m inordinately fascinated with the in-between. I romance the journey. I thrill in the process. The interstices lure me as much as the origin and destination.
And so it is with this icehouse rehab. The journey. The myriad micro narratives tucked into each chapter.
Currently we’re wobbling a little as we adapt to two members of our team succumbing to COVID, as we ramp up testing and masking (and wondering if anyone else is destined to become sick.) The icehouse is such a small, enclosed work environment, so it’s easy to worry that the contagion may have embraced others still testing negative. But angst breeds angst, not relief or good fortune. So I try, we all try to focus on matters we *can* control. Tony finishes beech flooring in the loft — sanding and cleaning and sealing and repeating — investing his energy and passion in perfecting the small but sensational perch where soon I will be able to install myself at my black walnut desk to write and revise and read. Supi and Justin began trimming in the coving, working the poplar lumber that was grown, harvested, milled, seasoned, dimensioned, and finished at Rosslyn. Hyperlocal carpentry. Leaning into tangible tasks, transforming sketches, plans, field notes, and punch lists into results is an analgesic of sorts.
Tomorrow we will all test again. If fortune spares us, we will all be able to stay on task, charting a path forward, advancing through timelines and upon objectives. The wind will subside, the temperature will rise, the snow will melt, and the mud will gradually replace the ice. Perhaps the opossum will return to eat the cracked corn intended for the mallards, the daffodils will recover from the blizzard and begin to push their green fuses higher, and the high tunnel will warm to 103° again (almost tripling the temperature outside). If time permits, Susan and I may cross country ski through Rosslyn’s fields and forests after finalizing the order for new deck furniture. My brave bride might even take a polar plunge into 35° Lake Champlain. By choice. For pleasure. I will almost definitely not take a polar plunge into Lake Champlain.
Field notes will accrue, punch lists will get checked off, and another chapter will be sculpted out of bits of wood, stories, laughter, memories made, and incremental headway. I am anticipating a good day!
“Once upon a time,” begins the story, the fairytale, the adventure,… It opens a door into the past, gentling the listener or reader into a moment long enough ago to seem harmless but present enough to feel relevant right now. A timeless historic canvas upon which to experience (or compose) a compelling narrative.
Timeless Historic (Source: Geo Davis)
This opening sequence invites the audience to suspend disbelief. Old and new, past and present, actual and possible, historic and confabulatory.
Living History & Timeless Historic
I’m drawn to the juxtaposition of old and new. In many respects rehabilitating Rosslyn and making our life here has blurred past, present, and future. History is alive. And similarly much of our quotidian existence is timeless. There’s a whimsical simultaneity of lives and times that infiltrates our lakeside lifestyle. (Source: Boathouse Illustration Revisited)
Rosslyn invites reinvention. Re-imagination. Rehabilitation and playful, capricious, adaptation.
I’ve come to playfully experiment, sometimes renovating that which is vintage or antique. Others times I accelerate aging. Or agelessness. And sometimes these shifts in perspective yield surprising, often refreshing new experiences. (Source: Boathouse Illustration Revisited)
Within an historic home, design and lifestyle needn’t be frozen in antiquity. Both benefit from compatibility with the building’s historic architectural and aesthetic pedigree. But, I believe, an historic home likewise benefits when vitality and relevance today — contemporary livability, if you will — ensure that the home transcends the status of relic or museum.
At best, an historic home is ageless, not in so far as the authentic historic architecture and design are erased, diminished, or compromised, but the functionality and usability endure. Rosslyn is in so many respects a timeless historic residence because two centuries after construction she remains an optimal platform for our lifestyle.
How and why this is the case remain priority topics for me to explore in greater depth. And I suspect that my formative years at Deerfield Academy in Deerfield Historic Deerfield Massachusetts might underpin some of my instincts in this respect. But I’m meandering afield, so I’ll make a point of revisiting in a separate post.
In the vintage postcard above — faded, blurred, and stained with touch and time — the historic lighthouse located at Split Rock in Essex, NY reigns over a promontory bearing a curious resemblance to an arboretum, more landscaped and less wild than today. A copse of diverse specimen trees here, a granite outcrop there, a grassy bluff here,… I can’t help but see a sort of Split Rock botanical garden. But it wasn’t. I imagine the photographer and postcard publisher were likely thinking of the flora and topography as mere garlands for the centerpiece, the focus of the postcard: Split Rock Lighthouse.
There’s something comely about an old lighthouse, a spire of stone stacked skyward to secure a lofty perch for a sweeping beam of light. Bold, dependable, comforting. Or is it? Perhaps it’s just a tall tower like a barn with a silo? Is tall bold? Is a fortress-like column comforting? We ascribe much meaning to lighthouses because of their function. They are predictable and dependable because predictable, dependable lighthouse keepers ensured that they were. Today, I suppose, that’s mostly the work of technology. Bold and comforting likewise derive from function. Stormy night, navigating challenging seas, unreliable visibility, a valuable cargo, and the wellbeing, heck maybe even the lives of the boat’s captain and crew,… And then a navigational beam cutting through the blindness, showing the way to safe port. Or at least around a potentially dangerous obstacle that might otherwise have scattered ship and crew, reducing their industrious mission to memory and flotsam and jetsam.
In short, we think of lighthouses, so often portrayed in photographs and other artwork, as visually equivalent to the function they fulfill. We conflate the building with service it enables. We deploy references to lighthouses with confidence that our audience will understand what we mean. We think in metaphor. We speak in metaphor. And, by and large, the viewer, listener, or reader understands what we wish to imply.
This Is Not a Metaphor
Seven years ago, I was hit by a truck. This is not a metaphor. I was crossing the street two blocks from home when the driver, blinded by the sun, rammed into me. During my nine-month recovery, I began to reflect upon my life… I realized that for years, I had been stuck on an endless hamster wheel… I remembered the joke about the airline pilot who addressed his passengers over the intercom: “Attention: I have bad news and good news: Radar is down. We’re totally lost! But you’ll be glad to know we’re making very good time.” I knew I needed to make a change. — Susan Fassberg (Source: The Art of Looking – Reinventing Home)
The tragic accident, Fassberg assures us, is not a metaphor. Real truck, real sun, real collision, and real injuries. But the hamster wheel and the airplane trip? Metaphors. A pair of accessible and effective metaphors help Fassberg tidily convey her truth. She was stuck and needed to make a life change.
When Susan and I opted into the adventure of reawakening Rosslyn as our home, we knew that we needed to make a change. We were navigating disorienting liminal changes (personal, professional, financial, and even philosophical/ethical). In the midst of these tempestuous transitions, we latched onto a hope that Rosslyn would help us reboot. Rehab. Maybe reawakening a needy property would reawaken our own hopes, optimism, confidence. We were in need of a full system reboot. Unplug. Count to ten. Replug. And, in our infinite wisdom (read irony, ergo… our infinite folly?) we chose to believe that Rosslyn, in need of TLC (and possibly life support) herself, would be able to minister to us. Made perfect sense at the time!
We had not been hit by a truck. Not a literal truck at least. Perhaps a metaphorical truck. Or several metaphorical trucks. And the joke about the airline pilot? Really, really familiar. Only, purchasing Rosslyn didn’t exactly precipitate a safe landing. Not for a few years, at least. And, yes, we were lost before throwing ourselves at the feet of Rosslyn, and we were often quite lost during those first few years.
Sure, we needed change. But we basically leaped into the tumbling kaleidoscope of constant, unpredictable change, each juggle and bump triggering a dazzling aurora borealis of tumbling technicolor mystery. Mysteries. It was spectacular and intoxicating. And it was often disorienting. Sometimes it was debilitating.
Are you with me? Maybe 50-100% clear on what I’m trying to say?
No?
Me either.
Not a metaphor, I promised. And then, I dove into metaphor. Metaphors.
Sorry.
Sometimes what I want to say and what I think I want to say are like the nearly marooned boat captain and the fog-lancing lighthouse. Each reaching through the turmoil toward one another, but only occasionally, fleetingly connecting.
When in danger of becoming marooned, I tell myself, narrow the focus. Tack 90° or so in a different direction. Decrease distance to desired destination by abbreviating the current journey….
Projecting Passion & Lovestruck Infatuation
I’ve often used the words “smitten”, “seduced”, beguiled, enchanted… when referring to Rosslyn. I ought to be more specific. I used these fuzzy euphemisms when describing my personal relationship with Rosslyn. And, in an effort to be as candid as comfortable — hopefully catalyzing some sort of catharsis, some sort of eureka moment clarifying this sixteen year affair with a home — I insisted, especially early on after purchasing Rosslyn from Elizabeth and George McNulty, that he, George McNulty, seemed to have had an almost four decade long love affair with Rosslyn. I even once asked his son, Jason McNulty, what he thought of that observation. I don’t recollect him making too much of my peculiar characterization, but perhaps I’ll find the opportunity to revisit this over-the-top and totally unjustified hypothesis. I bring it up now because it strikes me as peculiar that I initially felt so certain, perhaps I even needed to understand the previous owner’s relationship with this property as being a sort of love affair, an enduring passion that ran parallel to his marriages. And peculiar that Susan and I adopted this anthropomorphic oddity in explaining our own relationship with Rosslyn.
I relied on this fuzzy explanation for our outsized investment of energy, resources, and life into an old house because it was a way of avoiding the complexity of our true relationship. I figured that my love entanglement language would simply be heard as metaphorical exaggeration. And I hastened to contextualize my own infatuation with the previous owner’s alleged love affair as if to suggest that this property had a certain charm that could only be approximated with the language of love and passion. We all tend to speak in hyperbole, especially when asked to justify odd, uncharacteristic, or extreme behavior. Certainly our family and friends would have been justified in describing our all-in obsession with Rosslyn as reckless, foolhardy infatuation.
But I suspect that most who’ve heard me claim that we were beguiled or smitten, never really took me literally. Perhaps I didn’t take myself literally. I’ve come to wonder if this is not a metaphor at all. Or if we’re unable to navigate, to grapple with loss and hurt and confusion and hope and optimism without the medicine of metaphor.
Looking South from Split Rock Light (Vintage Postcard)
Why did I illustrate this post with Split Rock Lighthouse? Why did I borrow Susan Fassberg’s brave truth and then trip repeatedly over metaphor despite an sincere effort to come clean, to carve our some crystal clear truth? And why is it so comforting to include this second postcard above as I wander toward my conclusion-less conclusion to this post?
The vantage from the lighthouse, looking south, the postcard states (although its actually sort of southeast), across the northern end of the Split Rock Wildway, across Lake Champlain at the beginning of The Narrows, and then across Vermont toward the trailing end of the Green Mountain, this vantage is familiar. It is our metaphorical front yard. It is a significant reminder that our attraction to Rosslyn was, yes, a handsome old home and boathouse, but it was also this realm, this wild and overgrown invitation to let go… of so much. And to allow ourselves to gradually reawaken, to reinvigorate our hopes and dreams and to rediscover a future that had become stormy and confusing.
[I’ve just attempted to reread this post without hitting delete. What in the world am I wrestling with? And why is it so elusive? Damned if I know. Yet. But if you’ve made it this far, I apologize. Sometimes the captain navigates the ship. Other times the tempest itself seizes the helm!]
What wintery wonders shall I share with you today? How about a celebration (and showcase) of upcycled Christmas gifts dreamed into existence by three allstar members of our icehouse rehab team?
Upcycled Christmas Gifts from Pam, Hroth, and Tony (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
[pullquote]These upcycled Christmas gifts are a product and symbol of renewal.[/pullquote]
I talk and I type, but these three creative characters have reimagined and reinvented deconstruction debris into functional art and decor. They transformed a piece of old garapa decking and a handful of icehouse artifacts (uncovered during laborious hand excavation for the new foundation) into a handsome coatrack, and they transformed a gnarled piece of rusty steel back into a museum-worthy ice hook that turns the clock back 100+ years.
Let’s start with the photograph at the top of this post which Pam accompanied with the following note of explanation.
Hroth, Tony and I wanted to wish you both a very Merry Christmas. We came up with the idea to make a coat rack out of repurposed items. The wood is old garapa. I found the spikes in the icehouse during inventory and the hook was also discovered in the icehouse during excavation for the concrete floor/footers. Hroth custom made a handle for the ice hook. We also wanted to add a new hummingbird feeder to the garden outside of the breakfast area. Merry Christmas! — Pamuela Murphy
Perfection! Garapa upcycled from Rosslyn’s 2008-9 deck build and miscellaneous ice hauling artifacts reconciled and reborn as a new coat rack that will greet icehouse visitors upon entering the miniature foyer, and a restored antique ice hook that will be displayed prominently in the main room. Bravo, team.
Upcycled Christmas Gifts from Pam, Hroth, and Tony (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
I was curious how Hroth had fabricated the garapa handle for the ice hook out of old decking boards. It’s so round/cylindrical that it looks as if he’d used a lathe.
Two pieces of garapa laminated together. Started out about a 16 inch because it was easier to run through the table saw. I made an octagon out of it on the table saw, then used the big belt sander… I roughed it up a little bit. Didn’t want it to look too perfect. Then Pam suggested that we take a propane torch to it. Made it look older.
It was a fun project. I still need to seal the wood and the metal. Penetrating sealer works well on metal. It’s sharp… We were thinking you might want to put some corks on the ends… or garapa balls. That was the first thing I thought of. We can certainly do that. — Ottosen Hroth
Carving tiny garapa orbs to install on the spikes strikes me as the perfect way to complete the coat rack so that jackets can be hung without getting spikes. It’ll be a difficult-but-intriguing challenge! There must be some technique for creating a small wooden sphere out of a block of wood. Hhhmmm…
I can’t imagine more perfect Christmas gifts. Their collaboration has rendered layers of Rosslyn history — from the late 1800s and early 1900s when the icehouse was in use, through 2008 when we built the deck that yielded this garapa, to 2022 when the old deck was deconstructed and the icehouse rehabilitation was initiated — into timeless beauty that will adorn the icehouse when it is introduced/revealed next summer. These upcycled Christmas gifts are a product and symbol of renewal. Our gratitude is exceeded only by Hroth’s, Pam’s, and Tony’s collaborative accomplishment.
Upcycled Christmas Gifts (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Upcycled Christmas Gifts (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Upcycled Christmas Gift 2022: antique ice hook with handmade handle (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
The flip-through gallery above offers a few more details, and all three (as the two featured photographs above) are documented inside the icehouse with mid-construction backdrops: old studs with new spray foam insulation and new subfloor ready for interior framing and hardwood flooring. It’s tempting to offer tidier or even fancier backdrops, but authenticity prevails. Future decor created from old materials, documented midstream the icehouse’s transformation. Future, past, and present. Concurrent history and hope, a timeless present, an artistic representation of this liminal moment.
Backstory to Upcycled Christmas Gifts
Susan and my gratitude to Pam, Hroth, and Tony is (and obviously should be) the focus of today’s Rosslyn Redux installment, but I can’t conclude without first considering a slightly more amplified retrospective, the backstory, if you will, to the new coat rack and restored ice hook.
Let’s start by rewinding the timeline to 2008-9. Building the new deck and installing garapa decking was the proverbial caboose in a virtually endless train of construction that started in the summer of 2006. (Source: Garapa Decking 2008-2009)
In the photograph below, taken exactly fourteen years ago today, Warren Cross is putting the finishing touches on our first deck build. Although the perspective may be misleading given the still unbuilt garbage and recycling “shed” which today stands directly behind Warren, this is the northernmost extension of Rosslyn’s deck. The stone step (actually a repurposed hitching post chiseled from Chazy and Trenton limestone (aka “Essex stone”) and the rhododendron shrubs are not yet in place either.
But it you imagine the perspective as if you were standing just north of the morning room, looking back toward the carriage barn and icehouse, you’ll be oriented in no time. Oriented, yes, but nevertheless a bit disoriented too, I imagine, as you look upon a carpenter laboring in the snow to scribe and affix the garapa deck skirting / apron that will complete the installation that had began in the autumn with far more hospitable conditions.
Warren Cross completing garapa decking installation on December 22, 2008 (Photo: Geo Davis)
It’s worth noting that Warren, already in his mature years when he worked on Rosslyn with us, not only threw himself into difficult endeavors like the one above, he contributed decades’ of experience and an unsurpassed work ethic that inspired everyone with whom he worked in 2008 and 2009. But there’s an even more notable memory that describes Warren. He was a gentleman. And he was a gentle man. It was a privilege to witness Warren’s collegiality, and Rosslyn profited enduringly from his expertise. But it was his disposition, his consideration, and his kindness that make me nostalgic when I hear him mentioned or when I catch sight of him in photographs.
In terms of memories conjured by this repurposed garapa decking, I should include Hroth’s “research” this past autumn into how best we might reuse the lumber. There was such anticipation and excitement in the hours he experimented and explored. The image below perfectly illustrates the hidden gold just waiting to reemerge from the deconstructed decking material.
Hroth is continuing to experiment with the garapa decking we salvaged from our summer 2022 deck rebuild. I’m hoping to repurpose this honey toned Brazilian hardwood as paneling in the icehouse bathroom. (Source: Upcycling Decking Debris)
Hroth’s discoveries underpin our plan to panel the interior of the new icehouse bathroom with what for a decade and a half withstood the Adirondack Coast elements season after season, and a rambunctious parade of footfalls, barbecues, dog paws, wetsuits, etc. It’s as if the new coat rack exudes the anticipation and optimism that many of us brought to the journey of upcycling the old decking into the new paneling.
And there is an aside that I’m unable to resist mentioning. Pam’s late husband, Bob Murphy, who worked as our property caretaker and became an admired and dearly respected friend, several times removed and reinstalled Rosslyn’s garapa decking over the years — monitoring, triaging, and compensating for the failing TimberSIL substructure. He knew that we would need to rebuild the entire deck soon, and yet he waged a relentless campaign to extend the useful life of the deck as long as possible. I think he’d be proud of the work accomplished by the team this summer, and he sure would have loved being part of that team! And the icehouse rehab would have thrilled him. Needless to say, these upcycled Christmas gifts from Pam and Hroth and Tony also exude Bob’s smile, familiar chuckle, and that mischievous twinkle in his eyes.
And what about that antique ice hook?
I mentioned above an antique ice hook, and the photograph below illustrates exactly what I was referring to. Disinterred by Tony while cleaning out and grading the dirt floor of the icehouse, this badly corroded artifact bears an uncanny resemblsnce to a common tool of yesteryear: the handheld hook. This implement was most often used for 1) grabbing and hauling ice blocks and/or 2) carrying hay bales. The location where this relic was discovered (as well as plenty of examples uncovered by quick research online) strongly suggest that this is an antique ice hook. (Source: Icehouse Rehab 01: The Ice Hook)
Isn’t a beauty? Well, rusty and corroded, but a beauty nonetheless, I think.
Antique Ice Hook, artifact unearthed during the icehouse rehabilitation, 2022 (Source: R.P. Murphy)
The prospect of restoring that ice hook crossed my mind at the time. But it struck me as a challenging proposition given the advanced state of decay. What a surreal transformation from rust-crusted phantom to display-ready relic! It too is marinated in memories, some recent and personal, others vague and distant. In the near rearview mirror are the painstaking efforts made by our team to secure the historic stone foundation beneath the icehouse while ensuring the structural integrity demanded by modern building codes. A labor of loves on the parts of so many. And today we can look back from the proud side of accomplishment. As for the more distant rearview, the antique mirror has succumbed to the influence of time, the glass crazed and hazy, the metallic silver chipped and flaking. And yet we can detect traces of laughter and gossip as blocks of ice were cut from the lake, hooked and hauled up to the icehouse, and stacked in tidy tiers for cooling and consumption during temperate times ahead.
A Glimmer of Springtime
In closing this runaway post, I would like to express my warmest gratitude for the upcycled Christmas gifts above, and for a new hummingbird feeder to welcome our exuberant avian friends back in the springtime. Taken together this medley of gifts excite in Susan and me the enthusiasm and optimism for the coming months of rehabilitation and mere months from now the opportunity to celebrate a project too long deferred and so often anticipated. With luck we’ll be rejoicing together in the newly completed icehouse by the time the hummingbirds return to Rosslyn.
Hummingbird Feeder 2022 Christmas Gift from Pam, Tony, and Hroth (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
Thank you, Pam, Hroth, and Tony for these perfect presents. And thank you to everyone else I’ve mentioned above for enriching this home and our lives. I look forward to rekindling these memories when I hang my coat or my cap up each time I enter the icehouse. Merry Christmas to all!
You’ve heard of happy hour. And maybe even beer blogging. But opossum o’clock?
Carley *Prior* to Opossum O’Clock (Photo: Geo Davis)
Earlier this evening (or late this afternoon, if you’re still jet lagging from the standard time to daylight savings time adjustment,) Carley burst into a barking frenzy. Bark, bark, bark,… Not an excited “My momma’s home!” bark. Nor an “I need to pee” bark. It was an unmistakable alarm bark.
So I extracted myself from my desk chair and headed down to the sunporch where she’s taken to snoozing, tucked between pillows on the sofa, most days lately.
But she wasn’t on the sofa. She was alert at the glass doors, pointing, hackles high. All business.
So I followed her gaze to the stonewall around the back deck where a fat opossum was waddling. Carley was incensed. Why wouldn’t I let her out? She wanted to show that overgrown rat who was boss around here!
The opossum finally made her/his way up and over the snow bank, across the driveway, and then began an ungainly exit toward the hemlock hedge. At least until Carley seemed less threatening at which point the opossum made a 90° turn to the right and began waddling down toward the bird feeders hanging under the ginkgo tree.
Opossum, Oh, Possum
What to make of these quirky characters that have become commonplace in the Adirondacks despite the fact that I never saw one in this area in the 1970s and 1980s when I was growing up. Are they even native?
I turned to ChatGPT, the chatbot causing such a stir lately, to see what light it might shed (or make up).
Yes, the opossum is native to North America. In fact, it is the only marsupial that is native to the continent. Opossums can be found throughout much of the United States and Mexico, as well as parts of Central America and Canada. They are known for their distinctive appearance, including their long snout, hairless tail, and opposable thumbs on their hind feet. Opossums are also well-known for their ability to “play dead” when threatened, which is actually a defensive mechanism called thanatosis. (Source: Source: ChatGPT)
Not 100% sure that’s all tip-top information given the rather dubious ChatGPT answer that was shared with me earlier today by David Howson. (More on that tomorrow perhaps?) Let’s see what Wikipedia contributors believe about the opossum.
Opossums (/əˈpɒsəm/) are members of the marsupial order Didelphimorphia (/daɪˌdɛlfɪˈmɔːrfiə/) endemic to the Americas. The largest order of marsupials in the Western Hemisphere, it comprises 93 species in 18 genera. Opossums originated in South America and entered North America in the Great American Interchange following the connection of North and South America.
The Virginia opossum is the only species found in the United States and Canada. It is often simply referred to as an opossum, and in North America it is commonly referred to as a possum (/ˈpɒsəm/; sometimes rendered as ‘possum in written form to indicate the dropped “o”). Possums should not be confused with the Australasian arboreal marsupials of suborder Phalangeriformes that are also called possums because of their resemblance to the Didelphimorphia. The opossum is typically a nonaggressive animal. (Source: Wikipedia)
Seems like there’s enough overlap to set us straight (and enough Australasian unclarity to invite confusion?)
Let’s turn instead to a far more reliable source, poetry.
Opossum Poem
Oh, possum, opossum,
our springtime may have come;
narcissus nudging up,
snow melting into mud.
Perhaps prehensile tail,
opposable thumbs, and
dying art theatrics
have inured you to threats.
Or perhaps you're aware
that my Labrador's barks
are booming bluster not
cause for canine concern.
But beware, snouty snoop,
that winter's not finished,
and precocious parades
hint-hinting at hubris
may well invite frigid
flashbacks, hail, blizzards, and
temperate day delays
with bites bigger than barks.
Playing Opossum
[Witnessing the curious creature investigating our deck and yard, I’m transported back to another opossum memory, this one from December 23, 2008 during our early days living at Rosslyn with Griffin, our Labrador prior to Carley.]
Saturday morning and we’re sitting in the morning room eating waffles in our bathrobes and slippers. We’ve slept in, lazed around, made breakfast, and lingered over the ritual of starting our day.
It snowed last night. Not much, but just enough to cover everything. Maybe an inch. Wet snow. Like white frosting coating everything.
Suddenly I’m aware that a critter is making its way across the front lawn toward us. Actually Griffin realized it, stood up from his bed abruptly and pointed, hair on his back standing straight up, low rumbling half barks alternating with half threatening, half excited glances at us then back at the animal. Like a huge rat. Wet from the soggy snow. Dragging itself across the grass, then across the gravel driveway, then across the grass between the driveway and the house. He was coming right toward us and Griffin was not sure whether to be protective or excited.
“An opossum,” Susan and I both said at the same time.
“I’ve never seen one here,” I said.
“Me either,” Susan said.
“Looks like he’s headed for the trash bins,” I reasoned and picked up my Blackberry from the table. “I want to go take a picture.”
“Don’t go out there.”
“Why not?”
“He could bite you. They’re mean.”
“I won’t get that close. Just a quick picture then I’ll be back in.”
The opossum had managed to pull himself up the stone step to the deck and was waddling past the sliding doors of the garbage and recycling shed toward the back deck.
I opened the door and headed outside in my bathrobe and slippers to get a closer look and a photo.
And then, as if Susan had cast a spell upon me, totally wipe out.
I fell on my back, head bouncing off the deck, limbs splayed to the from corners, bathrobe wide open, buck naked, looking up at the sky. And at a freaked out opossum literally a foot from my face, chattering his teeth menacingly.
Susan was laughing, Griffin was barking wildly inside, I was stunned, and the opossum was presiding.
