Rosslyn Redux

Tag: Essex New York

  • Hyde Gate For Sale or Rent

    For Sale: Hyde Gate, aka Rosslyn, in Essex, New York
    For Sale: Hyde Gate (aka Rosslyn), in Essex, New York, April 1910.

    Rosslyn artifacts pop up all over the place! And they’re not always Rosslyn artifacts; sometimes they’re Hyde Gate artifacts or Sherwood Inn artifacts… Honestly one of the most enjoyable aspects of owning and renovating our home is stumbling across interesting relics of its almost 200 year history.

    I originally came across the advertisement above on eBay. The auction item was a full page ripped from the April 1910 edition of Country Life in America. How could I resist? One more quirky artifact for the digital library!

    Turns out it wasn’t the only time that Hyde Gate (aka Rosslyn) was advertised for sale or rent in the early twentieth century. A March 1910 advertisement is available on Google Books. A handy tool for finding print book content, Google Books offers increased functionality for out-of-copyright content such as this old magazine. For free you can “clip” the image (at right) to use elsewhere, and you can even clip the text content from the page. The following is quoted from the ad:

    For Sale: Hyde Gate, aka Rosslyn, in Essex, New York, March 1910
    For Sale: Hyde Gate (aka Rosslyn) in Essex, New York, March 1910.

    FOR SALE “HYDE GATE,” Essex, N.Y. FOR RENT

    The country residence of Caleb James Coatsworth Esq. is just at the outskirts of Essex Village on Lake Champlain, New York. The house faces the lake, and the grounds run right down to the lake with bath houses and a large private dock. The house is between eighty five and a hundred years old. Is built of brick. It is very beautifully furnished with the real antique Colonial furniture and although lighted throughout with electricity there is not on modem electrical fixture on the first floor.

    In the hall there is an old lantern, and in all the rooms old candelabra hanging from the ceilings; there are also lamps on the centre table lighted by electricity. The house is a beautiful example of the Colonial period. It contains ten bed rooms and two bath rooms on the second floor, and three bed rooms on the third floor, also two lavatories on first floor. One can leave “Hyde Gate” in an automobile after breakfast and lunch at Lake Placid, or leave “Hyde Gate” in the morning and dine at Bretton Woods in the White Mountains, or dine at Montreal, Canada. Lake Placid is fifty miles from “Hyde Gate” by road; Bretton Woods one hundred and eighteen miles; and the Windsor Hotel, Montreal, Canada is just one hundred miles; all the roads are very good. It Is a great central starting point for automobiling. The owner of “Hyde Gate” has made all of these trips. You can leave the dock at “Hyde Gate” in a launch and go to Westport, NY, or Vergennes, Vermont (the oldest city in Vermont) through the beautiful Otter Creek or Burlington, Vermont in less than an hour, or “Bluff Point” in two hours where the Lake Champlain Hotel is located, which is considered the best hotel In the Adirondacks.

    The grounds contain between five and six acres, beautifully laid out, and there is a great abundance of flowers, a large kitchen garden, and quite a number of fruit trees and currant bushes, etc.

    A stable with room for five horses, carriage room for five or six carriages, large harness room with glass case for harness, and good comfortable quarters for coachman. There is a large carriage shed outside of table where extra carriages can be stored, also suitable for two automobiles, several chicken houses, and a pigeon house. There is a large new ice house with a cold storage house built in connection with it.

    Hyde Gate” is just half way on Lake Champlain, and one can make the trip to New York in a motor boat in two days running spending the night at Albany, or you can run to Montreal with a motor boat in two days.

    Enquire CALEB JAMES COATSWORTH 110 South Penn Ave Atlantic City NJ (via Country Life in America, March 1910, P. 495)

    A couple of years later a similar advertisement ran in the April 1912 issue of Country Life in America. And it would seem that Caleb James Coatsworth was learning a thing or two about advertising with each return to ink. The text length and detail is generally the same throughout, but a bit of brevity slips into the equation, and the photographs improve significantly. Perhaps there are later advertisements that I’ve missed?

    Let’s take a look at the copy for Coatsworth’s 1912 Hyde Gate advertisement:

    For Sale: Hyde Gate, aka Rosslyn, in Essex, New York, March 1912.
    For Sale: Hyde Gate (aka Rosslyn) in Essex, New York, March 1912.

    For Sale HYDE GATE ESSEX NY For Rent

    “Hyde Gate” is just at the outskirts of Essex Village on Lake Champlain, N.Y. It is the country residence of Caleb James Coatsworth. The house faces the lake, and the ground runs down to the lake. There are bath houses and a large private dock. The house is between 85 and 100 years old. It is a beautiful example of the Colonial period; made of brick. It is very beautifully furnished with antique colonial furniture. It contains ten bed rooms and two bath rooms on the second floor and three bed rooms on the third floor. Also two laboratories on the first floor.

    The grounds contain between 5 and 6 acres beautifully laid out. There is a great abundance of flowers. A large kitchen garden and a number of fruit trees and currant bushes, etc. A stable with room for five horses, accommodations for 5 or 6 carriages, large harness room and good comfortable quarters for coachman. Another carriage shed affords accommodations for extra carriages and two automobiles. There are other outhouses. Further particulars from

    CALEB JAMES COATSWORTH

    Hyde Gate Eases NY (via Country Life in America, April 1912, P. 3)

    Two laboratories on the first floor? Fantastic! It’s handy having multiple versions of this ad to sort out the unlikely presence of a pair of labs in a summer residence… Two lavatories, now that makes a little bit more sense. Imagine the ten year old son who’s spent all spring looking forward to summer vacation on Lake Champlain. His father has promised that their summer rental includes two laboratories. Oh, the experiments that have occupied the boy’s daydreams in the final stretch of the school year. A homemade volcano, frog dissection,… the options are endless. And then to arrive after an exhausting journey along bumpy roads in the days long before air conditioning. And the lad races inside to search for the laboratories, to find the answer to his fantasies only to discover that it was an error. Two lavatories? What sort of evil joke is that?

  • Redacting Rosslyn

    Geo Davis Redacting Rosslyn, summer 2011
    Geo Davis Redacting Rosslyn, summer 2011

    [Note: This story has been updated.]

    I’d like to introduce you to Redacting Rosslyn, the newest theme / navigational thread to join the original three: Wanderlust to Houselust, Archeology of Home, and Rehab Ad Infinitum. (Update: Yet another theme, Houselust to Wonderlust, was added circa 2020.) For the sake of clarity and candor, I should go full disclosure before getting in much deeper. Redacting Rosslyn is actually less of a theme than it is a catch-all. Since that’s a little misleading, I’d better clear matters up from the outset. Let’s start with the idea of redaction…

    redaction noun
1 The process of editing text for publication.
1.1 The censoring or obscuring of part of a text for legal or security purposes.
1.2 A version of a text, such as a new edition or an abridged version.
Origin Late 18th century: from French rédaction, from late Latin redactio(n-), from redigere ‘bring back’. (Source: Oxford Dictionaries)

    Early on in the process of transforming our home and lifestyle reboot into a story, I recognized that there wasn’t a nice tidy package for Rosslyn Redux. Or better put, I wasn’t successfully wrangling this adventure into a familiar format. A book, for example. This was my initial thought, but what sort of book. Memoir? How to? Thematically structured nonfiction? Lyric essay? Poems? Scrapbook?!?!

    As I mucked around collecting and creating and curating content, I needed a temporarycontainer until I could formulate a plan. The blog was born. But soon it grew sprawling and unwieldy, so met with agents and editors to pick their brains. What’s a storyteller to do when his story is wayward and willfully independent? Their advice: make it a memoir, tighten the timeline (ideally no more than a year), and focus on my relationship with Susan.

    I was unconvinced. That formula might well have been sellable, but a 1-year story about my marriage wasn’t really what interested me, and it certainly wasn’t the adventure I’d been exploring on Rosslyn Redux.

    So I went rogue. I developed a short, solo performance piece to

    1. explore whether or not the stage might be the best vehicle for telling our Rosslyn story,
    2. solicit feedback from an audience (different than the blog, I presumed) about what sort of story they thought I should be creating. Maybe they could offer some fresh insight?

    On August 3, 2011 I performed Redacting Rosslyn Redux at the Depot Theatre in Westport, and the experience transformed my understanding and hopes for the project. I’ve tackled the takeaways elsewhere, so I’ll try to stay on track here.

    Let’s flip back to the idea of redaction for a moment.

    Origin and Etymology of redaction

    French rédaction, from Late Latin redaction-, redactio

    act of reducing, compressing, from Latin redigere to bring back, reduce, from re-, red- re- + agere to lead (Source: Merriam-Webster)

    Reducing, compressing, and bringing back are the crux. Although Redacting Rosslyn has evolved into a fourth theme, it’s really more of a meta look at my early decision to DIY this home rehab, my decision to morph the adventure into a storytelling project, and all of the other bizarre ancillary developments that I stumbled into as I became more and more obsessed with how (and why) to tell this story in this peculiar digital age.

    It’s worth noting that the flavor profile for Redacting Rosslyn differs decidedly from Wanderlust to Houselust, Archeology of Home, Rehab Ad Infinitum, and Houselust to Wonderlust. I hope that the audience overlaps, but it probably 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…

  • George D. Anson, Essex Merchant

    ACME, Marseilles White Spray Soaps, sold by Essex merchant Geo D. Anson.
    ACME, Marseilles White Spray Soaps, sold by Essex merchant Geo D. Anson.

    Ever scouring the midden heaps—real and virtual—for Essex artifacts, I came across these curiosities. These ACME “picture cards” were offered as incentives to soap customers. Save ACME brand Marseilles White Spray Soap wrappers, mail them to Lautz Bros & Co. (located in Buffalo, New York), and receive these odd collectibles. Think of them as the colorful baubles of an early brand loyalty scheme.

    Why am I sharing these?

    Flip the cards and you find this.

    George D. Anson, Essex Merchant

    It turns out that Essex merchant Geo. D. Anson (aka George D. Anson) was offering these to patrons of his general store in the late nineteenth century, yet another reminder of our industrious forebears in this once bustling community.

    We learn a bit more about George D. Anson here:

    George D. Anson established a store in the building now occupied by him in 188o. It is the same building which H. D. Edwards had used as a store years ago, but it had been vacant for some time when Mr. Anson came into it. (Source: “History of Essex, New York”, Chapter XXXIV (pp. 540-559) of History of Essex County with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of its Prominent Men and Pioneers, edited by H. P. Smith, published by D. Mason & Co., Publishers and Printers, 63 West Water St., Syracuse, NY 1885.)

    And, if the data logged at Find A Grave Memorial is correct, then we know the following about George D. Anson:

    Birth: 1839
    Death: 1902
    Parent: Serena Spear Anson (1800-1887)
    Spouse: Caroline Stower Anson (1847-1877)
    Children: Edward S Anson (1875-1946), Laura S Anson (1877-1954)
    Burial: Essex Cemetery, Essex, New York
    Source: Heidi McColgan (findagrave.com)

    I can’t personally vouch for the family tree since it leapfrogs my research, but it seems plausible. (Special thanks to Heidi McColgan and Karen Kelly for the information and photos.)

    Anson’s Store and Anson’s Dairy

    This is my first discovery that George D. Anson ran a store in Essex circa 1880. I hope to learn more about him/it in part because I’d like to know if this is the same Anson family that ran a dairy in Wadhams when I grew up. (See “Homeport in Wadhams, NY“, “Hickory Hill and Homeport“,  etc.)

    Vintage milk top from Anson's Dairy in Wadhams, NY
    Vintage milk top from Anson’s Dairy in Wadhams, NY

    I grew up in Wadhams when there was still a post office, a general store, and an Agway farm supply store. Does that sound like a Norman Rockwell calendar illustration? It certainly does when you add a milkman into the mix.

    Rain snow or shine Mr. Anson delivered the brunt of our breakfast ingredients. Each week he drove or walked (if too snowy or icy to drive) up our steep driveway lugging his fresh provisions. He let himself in, dropped off the goods, picked up a check that my mother left for him once a month, and continued on his way.

    The good old days… (Source: Essex on Lake Champlain)

    Off to poke around some more! (Please let me know if you can help fill in the gaps.)

  • Re-roofing and Flood Proofing

    Re-roofing and Flood Proofing

    Rosslyn boathouse when re-roofing was 50% complete in the summer of 2010
    Rosslyn boathouse when re-roofing was 50% complete in the summer of 2010

    Last summer (June-July 2010) our biggest concern with Rosslyn’s boathouse was restoring the roof. It’s hard to imagine that a year later our biggest concern is saving the building, pier and waterfront from finally-receding-but-increasingly-rough Lake Champlain flood waters! What better way to distract our anxieties than to look back on drier times?

    The cedar shingle was suffering from many years of neglect. Covered with moss and rotted completely through in many areas, it was possible to watch clouds passing overhead (and fireworks) by standing in the second story and looking through the rot spots in the roof! Friend and former neighbor Michael Leslie headed up the project of stripping the expired shingles, rebuilding the rotted beams, sub-roof and related trim including the window overlooking the lake. The following comes from a blog post last July as we rounded the halfway mark.

    The hardest part of re-shingling Rosslyn dock house is now behind us. Special thanks to Michael Leslie, Jerry Spooner and Jim Spooner for their progress so far.

    In a bizarre twist, David Hislop asked me yesterday, “What’s the story with the dock house?” Hmmm… The story? Well, that’s what I’m writing: Rosslyn Redux. Coming soon to a digital download near you. 😉 Turns out he was referring to the roof. “People are asking why you’re re-roofing it AGAIN.” Again? Apparently a half dozen people have asked him this question. Easy answer. We’re not. It hasn’t been re-shingled since the early/mid 1980’s, but after a quarter century of rain, snow, ice, sun and wind, many of the shingles have rotted through and the roof is leaking, especially the southern exposure. We’d known that we would eventually have to strip the old shingles, but we had delayed as long as practical. Let’s hope the new roof lasts as long as the old one!

    Although the re-roofing project took considerably longer than anticipated (this formula has become the rule rather than the exception during the process of renovating Rosslyn), it was worth every second when the beautiful work was complete. And doubly so last winter when snowstorms battered the little structure and again this spring when rain lashed at the roof. For the first time since buying this property in the summer of 2006 my bride and I could stop worrying about the boathouse that seduced us half a decade ago! The foundation had been restored. The structure had been restored. And now the roof had been restored. Life was good…

    Perhaps we were too pleased? Perhaps hubris slipped into our homeowner psyche’s? Perhaps. Or perhaps nature’s far more powerful and far more fickle and unpredictable than we can possibly imagine. I’ve commented elsewhere that nature is a formidable foe and a loyal friend. I genuinely believe this, and yet this spring has reminded me that a boathouse built on a pier in the waters of a lake is not natural. It is a valuable architectural artifact. It is an indulgence. But it is not natural. And despite my resolve to balance my lifestyle with healthy stewardship of the natural environment, I never before stopped to contemplate how unnatural this structure really is. Although I’d likely discourage construction of a new albeit similar structure in fragile habitat like Lake Champlain, I never once stopped to consider Rosslyn’s beautiful boathouse a violation of nature because it already existed. It’s part of the architectural heritage of Essex, NY. In fact, we felt a responsibility to restore the boathouse. Indeed I still do, despite my newfound recognition that it contradicts my conventional bias.

    Life is complex, and contradictions are everywhere. I don’t pretend to know all the right answers, nor even very many of them. But I’m beginning to suspect that the silver lining of Lake Champlain’s destructive flooding this spring is that I’ve been forced me to recognize and grapple with the contradiction in preserving Rosslyn’s boathouse despite the potentially adverse environmental impact. It has reminded me that conviction is handy but not infallible, that conviction must be balanced with questioning and humility.

    So, I’m finally flood proofing my optimism! I’m still soggy and still anxious about the waves rolling through the interior of the boathouse and crashing against the rapidly eroding bank supporting Route 22, but I’m beginning to see that the glass is half full after all. And Lake Champlain? It’s still overfull!

  • Hazy Days Haiku

    Hazy Days Haiku

    I’d planned on getting the drone up in the air for some aerial photography of the waterfront and deck areas (where we’re planning some maintenance projects). As luck would have it the morning was misty. No, more like pea soup. So I waited. And waited. It burned off a little, but finally I realized it wasn’t going to clear up. I decided to find out what I could photograph despite the less-than-optimal conditions.

    The results were not as useful as I’d hoped, but also considerably more interesting than anticipated. More dreamy and evocative. More dramatic. More romantic. In short, a win!

    Sometimes it’s just a matter or pivoting priorities, right?

    Hazy Days Haiku

    Lazy, hazy days,
    midsummer lakeside mornings,
    deciduous daze.

    At moments like this that I surrender to poetics. To place. To the poetics of place.

    Sometimes poetry and artful images speak more clearly, even more truthfully, than all the analytic blather we’re want to rely upon. Sometimes it’s worth stepping aside and allowing the simplest of ideas and images to tell the story. 

    Here’s one of the photographs that speaks volumes to me. Hope it says a little something to you as well!

    https://www.instagram.com/p/CSWsTAdrIuU/

    I find that aerial photography (and drone imaging in general) often deliver surprising results. The perspective is often surprising. As is the beauty. The almost tannic inkyness of the foreground waters (where Rosslyn’s boathouse extends east into Blood’s Bay). The shoreline connection to Lake Champlain‘s Adirondack Coast is as compelling as the relationship to the Adirondack Mountains (and Boquet Mountain in particular) is this hazy midsummer “eye in the sky” snapshot.

  • Is Home a Place, a Feeling, or a Relationship? ⁣

    Is Home a Place, a Feeling, or a Relationship? ⁣

    Is Home a Place, a Feeling, or a Relationship? ⁣(Source: Geo Davis)
    Is Home a Place, a Feeling, or a Relationship? ⁣(Source: Geo Davis)

    In the days since publishing “What Makes a House a Home?” I’ve been fortunate to enjoy follow up exchanges with many of you. It seems that we all have some compelling notions of homeness! Thank you for reaching out and sharing your often personal stories. I’ve mentioned to several of you that I’d like to dive in a little deeper if/when you’re inclined. This inquiry is foundational to Rosslyn Redux, and I believe that the objective is less to answer the question and more to propagate more questions, to seed wonder and reflection.

    There are so many little forays into this residential quest, that I’ve decided to follow up with three follow-ups posts that intrigue me and that have been percolating with renewed vigor since sharing the previous post. I’ll jumpstart the three with a preliminary introduction of sorts, maybe more of a welcome, today in seeding the three questions as one. Is home a place, a feeling, or a relationship? ⁣I’m hoping to intersperse more narrowly focused posts on each of the three questions with progress reports on the icehouse rehab (It was a big day today!) and the boathouse gangway. And I’m hoping to hear from you if you feel moved to share your thoughts on any of the three. I suspect that many of us consider all three to be connected in some way to our ideas of home. More one than another?

    Is Home a Place?

    Obviously Rosslyn is very much a place. It’s an historic property in Essex, New York, on the Adirondack Coast of Lake Champlain. Pretty specific, right. Place, place, place. And to be sure much of what I showcase in these posts is a reflection on place, even the poetics of place.

    Two weeks ago I shared a tickler for this post on Instagram, a short reel offering an aerial view of Rosslyn that I filmed with my drone last summer. It feels meditative to me. Like a soaring seagull wondering, wandering…

    https://www.instagram.com/reel/ClB-1F8AFiK/

    I think for now, I’ll leave the question of home as place gently gyring in the updraft to be picked up again soon in another post.

    Is Home a Relationship?

    In the digital sketch / watercolor at the top of this post, the almost abstract blue green wash hopefully feels a little bit like a dream. Maybe a memory. Something fuzzy and abstract in my memory. It’s a barn, actually a barn quite near Rosslyn in the hamlet of Boquet. But it’s not necessarily that barn I’m depicting. It’s many barns including the barns at Rosslyn (carriage barn and icehouse) the barns at The Farm where I spent a few formative early years, and the barn(s) that I hope to one day, same day build or rebuild. In short, for reasons I’m still unraveling, homeness for me includes a feeling of an old, perhaps even an abandoned farm, with barns. More at that anon.

    Is Home a Place, a Feeling, or a Relationship? ⁣(Source: Geo Davis)
    Is Home a Place, a Feeling, or a Relationship? ⁣(Source: Geo Davis)

    Is Home a Feeling?

    Sticking with digital sketches / watercolors for a moment, that black and white image above was actually made a few years ago to represent Griffin, our Labrador Retriever before Carley. But like the barn, my rudimentary skills at representation allow it to merge into all of our dogs including Tasha, who we had before Griffin, and even Griffin-the-1st, a long ago predecessor and the namesake for our more recent Griffin. That’s a bit jumbled, but it’ll do for now.

    Why dogness as a way to explore homeness? Well, frankly, for me, part of the feeling of home is that it’s where my dog is. And when we’re migratory between the Adirondacks and the Southwest seasonally, our dog is with us, maintaining a sense of home even though we’re temporarily nomadic. More on that now soon.

    Is Home a Point of Overlap Place, Relationship, and Feeling?

    I’ll leave you with this follow-on because I find that it’s surprisingly challenging to tease apart the elements of homeness. Intrinsic to all three, is my beautiful bride, Susan. She is my home in a way that embodies place, relationship, and feeling. What about you?

  • Adirondack Chairs Revisited

    Adirondack R&R in one of many versions of the Adirondack Chair
    Vintage R&R; Vintage Adirondack Chairs

    “To all whom it may concern: Be it known that I, Harry C. Bunnell, a citizen of the United States, residing at Westport, in the county of Essex and the State of New York, have invented a new and useful Improvement in Chairs. … ” So begins patent number 794,777, dated July 18, 1905, in reference to what we commonly refer to as the Adirondack Chair. With its signature slanted back and wide armrests, the recognizable profile of this outdoor recliner has become a trademark of summer in America. Despite the patent filed over a hundred years ago, though, Harry Bunnell, a carpenter and shop owner, was not actually the one who created the chair’s design. (via NYTimes.com.)

    Image from original patent for Adirondack Chairs
    Image from original patent for Adirondack Chairs

    In Monday’s Rosslyn Roundup I included a link to a post about Adirondack Chairs, originally invented by Thomas Lee in 1903 but copied and adapted by countless carpenters since. It is a welcome surprise then to see the New York Times’ The 6th Floor blog tackling the same timely topic today.

    In “Who Made That Adirondack Chair?” Hilary Greenbaum highlights Harry C. Bunnel’s decision to patent the design actually invented by Thomas Lee allegedly without his permission. A case of vintage Adirondack snark? Perhaps. But even in Hilary’s telling, Lee seems to have been gracious and let the matter go, permitting his friend to produce the Adirondack chairs for profit for a quarter century.

    Local Link to Adirondack Chairs

    [pullquote]I think Uncle Tom’s design is superior but Harry Bunnell patented and sold “a better mouse trap”.[/pullquote]

    As luck would have it, I’m friendly with several of Thomas Lee’s descendants who still visit or live in Westport, New York – our Lake Champlain “neighbor” to the south –  where the original Adirondack chairs (aka Westport chairs) were invented and produced. I’ll ask around to see if there’s any more to this story, perhaps passed down through the generations.

    Update: I checked in with Bruce Ware, the realtor who showed us property for several years and ultimately brokered the deal for us when we purchased Rosslyn. He is directly related to Thomas Lee. Here’s what he had to say:

    The Adirondack chairs that Uncle Tom made and the one that Bunnell patented are similar but not the same. I can say that I think Uncle Tom’s design is superior but Harry Bunnell patented and sold “a better mouse trap”. The patent has since expired, and I would be happy to discuss it more and show you the differences. So it goes… (Bruce Ware, 6/30/11)

    If you know any more about the history of Adirondack chairs, please share your wisdom in the comments below or on the Facebook page.

  • Almost Logical

    What if? Wondering what life would be like living full-time in the Champlain Valley...
    What if? Wondering what life would be like living full-time in the Champlain Valley…

    Within minutes we were tripping over each other, drunk with excitement, imagining one whimsical “What if…” scenario after another. No filter, no caution. Our reveries flitted from one idyllic snapshot to another.

    “What if I finally sat down and finished my novel?” After dawdling self indulgently for a dozen years – writing, rewriting, discarding, rewriting, shuffling, reinventing – my novel had evolved from failed poetry collection to short story collection to novel to a tangle of interconnecting narratives that loosely paralleled my life since graduating from college. Too much evolution. Too little focus. But what if I made time to sit down and knock it out? Reboot. Start over. Find the story. Write it down. Move on.

    “What if you weren’t sitting in front of your computer all day? Every day?” Susan asked, returning to a common theme. “What if you went outside and played with Tasha? Took her swimming or hiking or skiing every day?”

    “What if all three of us went swimming or hiking or skiing every day? What if Tasha and I went jogging along Lakeshore Road instead of the East River?”

    We could waterski and windsurf for half the year instead of just two or three months, starting in May with drysuits and finishing in the end of October. We could sail the Hobie Cat more instead of letting it collect spider webs on the Rock Harbor beach. I could fly fish the Boquet and Ausable Rivers in the afternoon while Tasha snoozed on the bank. We could join Essex Farm, the local CSA, supporting a local startup while eating healthy, locally grown and raised food. I could grow a vegetable garden, an herb garden, an orchard. Susan could work for an architecture firm in Burlington and volunteer at the animal shelter. We could buy season passes to Whiteface and downhill ski several days a week. We could cross country ski and snowshoe and bike and rollerblade and kayak and canoe and hike, and maybe I would start rock climbing again. And how much more smoothly the Lapine House renovation would be if we were on-site every day answering questions, catching mistakes before it was too late.

    “I could interview candidates for Hamilton!” Susan said. She had recently become an alumni trustee for her alma mater, and her already high enthusiasm had skyrocketed. She had become a walking-talking billboard for the college. “You know how much more valuable it would be to interview candidates up here? There are tons of alumni interviewers in Manhattan, but in Westport? In Essex? In Elizabethtown?”

    Suspended in lukewarm bathwater, our collective brainstorm leap frogging forward, it all started to make a strange sort of sense, to seem almost logical.

  • Contemporary Vintage Boathouse

    Vintage boathouse postcard? Or not? (Source: Geo Davis)
    Vintage boathouse postcard? Or not? (Source: Geo Davis)

    Is this a vintage postcard or a recent photograph taken from the ferry dock in Essex, New York?

    If you guessed that the image is contemporary, you’re right. It was taken on 29 May 2017. Born a moody, slightly fuzzy phone shot but reborn a tango dancing, filter-upon-filter-upon-filtered vintage postcard wannabe. Or something…

    SaveSave

  • Frozen Lake Photos of Essex

    Photograph of Essex artist Bill Amadon (and his dog) walking/photographing on frozen Lake Champlain.
    Photograph of Essex artist Bill Amadon (and his dog) walking/photographing on frozen Lake Champlain.

    I spied Bill Amadon,(billamadon.com) an Essex artist and good friend, walking around on the frozen lake in front of our boathouse a few days ago. The lighting and distance made identification a little dodgy but the dog was hint #1 and a conversation with Bill the day prior (at the Essex Post Office where so many mid-winter encounters occur) was hint #2.

    Bill mentioned that he was working on a series of three commissioned paintings, and that he was hoping to make it out onto Lake Champlain early the following morning to capture the waterfront in early morning light. He needed the photos to research the third and final painting in the series.

    My suspicions were confirmed when a short while later Bill Amadon posted the following images to his Facebook page. He generously permitted me to showcase the photographs here. Enjoy!

  • North Country Farm Stands

    North Country Farm Stands

    The good folks at Cooking Up a Story featured this farm stand video about North Country summer living, and I couldn’t resist contacting them to find out where the farm stand is located. They responded quickly:

    They are in Alburgh, VT – which is in the northwest corner of the state – nestled against NY and Canada, along Route 2. Drive up and check them out sometime. Really nice people!

    Close enough for a visit, but not swing-by-and-grab-some-sweet-corn close. Too bad! Nevertheless, it’s an inspirational story. We used to have a similar farm stand near us in Essex, New York that was run by the Sayward family for many, many years, but it closed up a few summers ago. I still miss it!

    Farm-to-Table, a North Country summer tradition (Source: Rosslyn Redux)
    Farm-to-Table, a North Country summer tradition
    (Source: Rosslyn Redux)

    We’ve belonged to two CSAs since moving full-time to Essex, Essex Farm and Full and By Farm, and we grow a large vegetable garden and a gradually expanding orchard (with quite a few different types of fruit). So I’m not complaining, but I do love the experience of visiting a neighborhood farm stand. It’s nice to meet the growers, hear their stories, learn new ways to prepare the fresh produce.

  • See you at Depot Theatre

    See you at Depot Theatre

    Rosslyn boathouse, Essex, NY
    Rosslyn boathouse, Essex, NY

    Adirondack storyteller and writer, George Davis, needs you to help him kill a few stories on Wednesday, August 3 at The Depot Theatre in Westport, NY. Prepare for a pell-mell parade of vignettes, monologues and readings ranging from a wader-wearing Amazon named Rosslyn to a perennially pickled bathtub yachtsman… This solo performance pokes fun at the idiosyncrasies (and absurdities) of renovation, marriage and North Country life while inviting the audience to participate in editing a memoir… “Along the way I collected too many stories to fit in one book. The audience will help me decide which stories live. And which stories die. Basically, I’m asking otherwise compassionate, peaceful people to commit story-cide… It’s quite a unique opportunity!” (Adirondack Almanack)

    I’m almost ready to redact Rosslyn Redux tomorrow night in Westport. Still playing with timing, transitions, and trimming. Always room to cut it shorter, shorter, shorter. If you come, you can help by “gong” editing… What? I guess you’ll have to come to see what I mean…

    When I step onto the boards at the Depot Theatre tomorrow night, it will mark the first time that I’ve shared any of the material from the Rosslyn Redux manuscript, much less asked my readers to help me figure out what direction the final draft should take. Of course, much of what I’m reading will not make it into the final draft, and some of the vignettes aren’t even in the manuscript, instead created specifically for the performance. Suffice to say, this is an experiment, inviting readers and audience into the creative process, into the revision and redaction process. It could get very messy… Or it could be wildly successful. I’m gambling on the latter. In either case, I can’t wait to see how it turns out!

    An exuberant Adirondack bear hug to the good folks at Adirondack Almanack for posting “Storyteller, Writer George Davis at Depot Theatre August 3“.

    Update: I’ve just received some dapper Rosslyn Redux embroidered caps that will find their way onto the pates of some participants, and a stack of gift certificates to the finest dining establishments in Essex sit on my desk beside me. Participants will be entered into a drawing for caps, gift certificates, and one-day-some-day books!