When looking inside and searching within, wondering inward, wandering wayward, try to remember the power of pause. Dwell for a moment or maybe a day in the interval between familiar and mysterious, the interstices potently perfumed, possibilities pollinating, fierce fecundity flowering, fruiting.
— Geo Davis
The Power of Pause?
This small poem might not be complete. Close. But possibly still evolving. Likely.
Born of the lily macro, a habitual perspective for me. Intimacy. And unlikely angles. A fascination with the familiar unfamiliar. And the proximity between the known and the unknown. The exotic, unanticipated, irregular right in front of us. Even within us. The relationship between native and exotic. The gap. Distance. Time.
What if we more comfortably stalled in these interstices? If we opted to dawdle in the discomfort of risk, of uncertainty, of transition long enough to grow slightly more comfortable? And if investing ourselves in the pause, yielding trustingly, patiently, curiously might actually enrich us? Might fortify fruiting?
Seven Apples, an apple still life, August 10, 2022 (Source: Geo Davis)
Sometime seven apples, five ripe edibles and two depicted in watercolor, are perfection. Rosslyn’s curious combination of real fruit and facsimiles (the latter painted by a dear friend, Amy Guglielmo, nearly two decades ago) are subtly playful. A self reflective still life, if you will. A juxtaposition of food and art.
I’ll admit that a decent dose of sentimentality pulls me here. A delicate illustration conjured by a close companion of many years. And plump apples tempting. Granite agonized over, tiles attentively paired by my bride and me, installed by Elaine Miller in the August days of Rosslyn’s lengthy rehabilitation,…
But there’s another poignancy as well, and it’s rooted in the illustrative rendering, liquid pigments now dried onto, into paper. A photograph of a painting of apples. Next to real apples. A verisimilitude vignette. As I endeavor to untangle my Rosslyn narrative from our Rosslyn narrative; to distill my poems and stories and essays and homemade images from the property itself (and her many artifacts); indeed to separate myself, ourselves from the ecosystem that has been our home and our life for so long; there is something in this vignette that resonates deep within me despite the fact that I still can’t quite define it. Perhaps clarity will accrue in the coming months as I reexamine the memories and relics of our sixteen years at Rosslyn. Partly a poetics of place, perhaps. But what else? Why?
Sometimes — this time, for example — it’s worth relearning old lessons. Or reaffirming old lessons that are still relevant. And while a rotten tree trunk might, at first, seem an unlikely teacher, let’s postpone a moment our dismissal.
Hollow Tree Haiku
Attractive, healthy exteriors may belie spoiled interiors.
This past year or two has been an opportunity for much learning, and much relearning. Often enough I realize that lessons learned in one domain actually apply in another, often dissimilar, domain. A lesson learned while orcharding or vegetable gardening helps demystify a supply chain snafu. Or a carpentry workaround illuminates a contractor challenge.
And a tree trunk hollowed out by rot and opportunistic critters may offer not only a tidy haiku, but also an opportunity to reimagine form and function. Even beauty. What new destiny awaits this carcass of a tree?
[Sincere thanks to RP Murphy for documenting this handsome husk.]
Recent nights are feeling more September than August, and even some of the days. Dry heat (trending cooler) during the daytime, and crisp-to-chilly at night. This bodes well for apples, pears, grapes,… And so my mind is in the orchard.
Orchard Harvests (Source: Geo Davis)
Holistic orcharding has forged a gradual, intimate familiarity with my trees and with their habits. Harvest time offers confirmation and encouragement, but also occasional frustration and puzzlement. A bountiful harvest. A meager harvest. Coloration. Flavor. Texture. Orcharding and gardening hone appreciation for seasonality, serving is delightful reminders to remain humble and grateful, but also to aspire and stretch and explore. I am struck by the fact that no to harvest are identical. We cannot map one growing season onto another without blurring the picture.
Orchard Harvests Haiku
Orcharding seasons overlaid year upon year, harvests offset, fugue. — Geo Davis
Icehouse Haiku or Sketchy Brainstorm?!?! A once pondered (and discarded) concept for lifting the icehouse… (Source: Geo Davis)
Recent months have been busy with rebuilding and advancing plans for further rebuilding. Soon I’ll share an update on our summer 2022 deck rebuild, and I promise that it’ll be worth the wait. Until then, I’ll tease out another potential rebuild on the horizon. But first, by way of introduction, I offer you an icehouse haiku.
Icehouse Haiku
Once sanctuary
for winter ice in summer,
so insulated.
Sometimes a morsel is all we need. And for some of you this may be plenty. A glimpse into my recent ruminations on Rosslyn’s historic icehouse.
If a poem is way of repurposing an experience, a subject, an idea, then drifting into recent evolution of our icehouse vision via an icehouse haiku seems appropriate. We are, after all, returning to the many times delayed and postponed notion of completing the icehouse rehabilitation initiated back in 2006 and 2007. By the end of this week we may — fingers crossed — be able to offer an exciting update. For now a few brief sketches will suffice, minimalist asides underpinning the idea of repurposing this circa 1889 utility building in a way that is relevant and useful to us today.
Intrinsic to the Icehouse Haiku
Underlying the ultra compact words of the icehouse haiku above (and the composited photo and sketch above) are sixteen years of brainstorming and iterating (and repeatedly postponing) plans for rehabilitating the icehouse.
Rehabilitation fails with no sustainable plan for use. — Stef Noble (Source: Demolition Dedux)
Our earliest plans for revitalizing Rosslyn rested on this idea that use, usability, contemporary relevance is fundamental to successful historic rehabilitation. Sensitive, responsible, historically and architecturally accurate, yes. But most important, the building must have a functional reason to endure.
More on this anon, but for now a few glimpses backward in time…
My earliest inkling about icehouse-ness hearkens back about four and a half decades to Homeport, the Wadhams, New York property that my parents restored when I was young. Although already removed prior to my parents’ purchase of Homeport in the mid/late 1970s, I grew up aware that there had been an icehouse just beyond the “sunporch”, my parents’ summer bedroom. The idea fascinated me. A house full of ice. My youthful imagination conjured up all sorts of fanciful possibilities that history fated to exist in my imagination only.
Before tripping further down memory lane, let’s get onto an equal footing with respect to icehouses in general. What exactly were they?
An ice house, or icehouse, is a building used to store ice throughout the year, commonly used prior to the invention of the refrigerator…
During the winter, ice and snow would be cut from lakes or rivers, taken into the ice house, and packed with insulation (often straw or sawdust). It would remain frozen for many months, often until the following winter, and could be used as a source of ice during the summer months. The main application of the ice was the storage of foods, but it could also be used simply to cool drinks… (Source: Wikipedia)
Ingenious!
Ever since my Homeport days I’ve been intrigued by life in the era of icehouses. And so inheriting one when we purchased Rosslyn was a particular pleasure. All the more so when I came across Sally Lesh’s personal recollection of the icehouse at Rosslyn (aka Hyde Gate).
Directly across the road, ice was cut every winter from the frozen lake surface. All these years later, I can picture the huge square hole full of dark water where the big blocks of ice had been cut by men using long saws. Each block was then hauled out. I have no idea how the block of ice was carried up the steep rocky bank and across the road, up the sloping driveway past the house, past the big barn that houses the carriage and the car, and finally to the icehouse, where it was buried in sawdust. We had iceboxes then, no refrigerators. The ice was broken into square chunks that fit neatly into the tin-lined top compartment of the icebox. I do clearly recall picking tiny bits of sawdust out of my summertime lemonade throughout my childhood. — Sally Lesh, All My Houses: a Memoir (Source: Sally Lesh & the story of Hyde Gate | Rosslyn Redux)
Sawdust in lemonade seems a small price to pay for frosty beverages and safely preserved perishables long before refrigeration came to Essex. I imagine that somewhere, some day, I’ll come across some historic photographs documenting this very practice Lesh brings to life, but until then I’ll dwell in my imagination.
As a final sketch before wrapping up this icehouse haiku rumination, let’s revisit these words from an older post.
The inspector opined that the boathouse and icehouse were probably unrecoverable. Use them while we could or demolish and replace them. There were other eleventh hour surprises that jeopardized the sale too, but demolition as a recommendation was unnerving. Rosslyn’s boathouse was precisely what I’d fallen for. Tear it down? No chance. And the icehouse promised to be the perfect office/studio/playhouse. Think desk, easel, pool table, bar! (Source: Demolition: Rosslyn Dedux)
Okay, it’s long past the point that I should have abbreviated this runaway reflection. Go figure, I started with a microscopic poem, but then the words just came tumbling out. Sorry!
I occasionally question my choice of Redacting Rosslyn as the catchall category for the nearly decade-and-a-half process of documenting Rosslyn’s rehab ad infinitum or — more precisely — of telling the story (distilling the spirit from the collage of details, filtering out acerbic and delicate dregs, blending the best into a balanced and cohesive whole.) Aspiring toward a collection of converging vignettes, I nevertheless succumb to segues and siren songs, wondering and wandering wayward. Again. And again.
If only I could harness the haiku’s seductive simplicity…
Converging Vignettes Haiku
Looking through layers entangled textures, voices, converging vignettes. — Geo Davis
UnHaiku & Long-form
But wrangling a love affair with a home (and the layers of living that have accrued over sixteen years of Rosslyn homing) is less haiku than kaleidoscopic collage. Or mirage!
And while I often turn to haiku (or poetry in general) to capture what more prolix prose muddle or obscure, long-form is invariably useful to transform life into words. Fortunately it’s usually just a preliminary step, a zero draft or rough draft, that will condense and streamline through editing and revising. After all, sometimes unhaiku can amplify and dilate and reveal what a haiku can surreptitiously obscure. And long-form as a process can prime the proverbial pump, facilitate insights, expose patterns and possibilities that might have slipped past undiscerned in the lived moment.
Over the last few months that I’ve been re-immersing myself in years of Rosslyn ramblings, photographs, notes, and miscellaneous artifacts, converging vignettes have begun to reveal themselves. Are they mirages? Perhaps, but they’re familiar mirages rooted in memory. There’s a clarity to their contours. Perhaps the passage of time (and repetition of patterns) underpin discernment. I’m not sure. But I’m relieved and grateful that so far revisiting the past and overlaying the present is rendering… something. It’s premature to define it, label it, confine it, or restrict it. But there’s a profoundly exciting coalescence happening.
So where does this leave me/us?
Convergence
In an effort to continue catalyzing this convergence, I’m concurrently diving in and stepping back. Immersion and withdrawal. Total intimacy and distance. If convergence requires the merging of distinct entities and the progressive movement toward union, then I will commit to this process. I will deep dive into the tangled textures, the reverberating voices, the layers upon layers of life. But I will concurrently discipline myself to exercise some distance. Filtering and discarding. Disentangling and simplifying.
And I will revisit Ways of Seeing after many years in the hopes of better articulating what the heck I’m talking around!
I’d like to shift your focus for a moment to the almost-ready-for-groundbreaking rehabilitation of Rosslyn’s historic icehouse situated just north of the carriage barn. Has your focus shifted? Good. Now let’s zoom in a little tighter to the icehouse door. Perhaps imagine yourself walking south on the sidewalk in front of Rosslyn, looking across the front lawn past the stone wall, toward the setting sun. Can you see the west facade of the icehouse? Can you see the door?
Icehouse Door Haiku
Sightlines and viewsheds
in the historic district
hinge upon a door.
— Geo Davis
As I’ve remarked in the past, there are times when a tidy haiku might accomplish more than a verbose dissertation. If in your estimation my mission is accomplished in the seventeen syllables ahead, I invite you to abbreviate your read here.
If you’re inclined to probe a little deeper, or simply have no clue what I’m getting at, please read on. But, note that a dissertation isn’t in the offing. I’ll take a reasonable run at the idea(s) in the haiku above, but the bottom line is this. The west facade of Rosslyn’s icehouse is within the public viewshed and various sightlines reveal the icehouse door from sidewalk, road, etc. What does that mean, and why is it important?
Sightlines & Viewsheds
In architecture, design, and urban planning “sightlines” is a relatively self-explanatory term combining perspective and line-of-sight visibility within built and unbuilt environments. Hhhmmm… I’m pretty certain that armchair definition wouldn’t pass muster with the AIA, so let’s try a different approach. Within a building or any space, really, what you can see and the relationships between what you can see are your sightlines. What is visible? What is partially or completely obscured? How do visible elements relate to one another? Is the relationship between visible elements visually appealing?
Okay, so what about “viewshed”?
The good folks at Merriam-Webster define viewshed as “the natural environment that is visible from one or more viewing points”. Sounds a little bit like the way I’ve tried to explain sightlines. Let’s see if I can muddle things even further by dipping into the collective genius of Wikipedia.
A viewshed is the geographical area that is visible from a location. It includes all surrounding points that are in line-of-sight with that location and excludes points that are beyond the horizon or obstructed by terrain and other features (e.g., buildings, trees). Conversely, it can also refer to area from which an object can be seen. A viewshed is not necessarily “visible” to humans… (Source: Wikipedia, September 18, 2022)
All cleared up? No? Hhhmmm… Let’s tap a few other resources.
Viewsheds are visualizations of what is visible from a given point and are often used in urban planning. (Source: ArcGIS CityEngine Resources)
When I was 5 years old, I used to play hide-and-seek with my friends. Just like any kid, I’d always try to find the best hiding spots. I used to wonder: If I hide in this spot, what is visible from the observer’s point of view all around them (viewsheds)? Or if the observer looks in a straight line, what is obstructed or not (line of sight)? (Source: Line of Sight vs Viewshed: Visibility Analysis – GIS Geography)
Assessing what’s visible in a straight line from an observer’s specific location involves consideration for obstructions, topographical/elevation change, etc. This, as I understand it, is the sightline. Whereas the viewshed encompasses all visible objects and areas from the observer’s point of view.
In the case of our about-to-start icehouse rehabilitation, both the public viewshed (from the road, the sidewalk, even the lake which is a public thoroughfare) and the various sightlines (all three I’ve mentioned not only offer multiple perspective and multiple lines-of-sight on a spectrum from roughly north-to-south, but they also represent different elevations ergo unique topographical angles) are relevant, and they loosely informed the considerations of the Town of Essex Planning Board (and general public) when we presented our proposal this past July and August.
Essex Village Historic District
Because Rosslyn is a prominent part of the Essex Village Historic District, and because the historic icehouse is deemed important within the historic district’s public viewshed, the icehouse door became a point of discussion during our Planning Board approval process. The discourse and consideration is actually quite interesting. Historic icehouse. Historic icehouse doors. Historic District. Public viewshed. Public sightlines.
I’m going to treat this as a two-part post, this first installment to introduce the relevant considerations, and a follow-up once design decisions are finalized. For now, I’ll withhold the drawings as originally presented, in order to stimulate your own contemplation…
Sometimes it’s as if frames from two different films overlap. For a moment. Sometimes longer. Occasionally the overlapping images complement one another, but often the experience is jarring. Confusing. Unsettling.
Seasons bleed into one another playfully, testing our agility, our resilience. Far-flung geographies, domiciles, and life stages muddle, merge, and drift apart again. Our worlds intermingle. For a moment. Sometimes longer.
October Rain, Wordy
Tell me a story of prism pocks on pears. Sing me a song of raindrops on apples. Pen me a poem of flickering daylight, flirting with nightfall; of sleepless longing for toil-oiled muscles and limber limbed spring; of sauntering through my cherished orchard in sultry summer, still oblivious to the dreary drama of October rain.
October Rain, Visual
Sometimes poetry leans on language, word bricks and word mortar, to sculpt a song or a story. Sometimes vision is enough to free the singing underneath…
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CjYQvj3AtKY/
October Rain, Singalong
Another perspective on October Rain just might wiggle it’s way into your mental repeat. I happened upon the subtly hypnotic jingle by Robin Jackson, and now it’s continuous looping like a subconscious 8-track tape in my graying gray matter.
Mostly October is crisp and clear along the Adirondack Coast. Quintessential autumn. But exceptions and rules are made in mysterious ways…
I recently learned that autumn isn’t the best of times for drone honeybees, but there’s still time for the rest of us to get high on nectar. And since the humble haiku is nearly nectar in the poppy fields of poetry, I’ll defer today to an industrious honeybee high on nectar of a windblown poppy blossom.
High on Nectar Haiku
Pink petals flutter, honey bee, high on nectar, bustles, persistent.
I remember, as a boy, seeing a mature bald eagle sitting in this oak tree. It must’ve been 1984 or 1985. My mother was driving us from Rock Harbor to Plattsburgh, where we went to school. It was less common to see bald eagles back then. They were present in the Champlain Valley, but less abundant than today. So it was a big deal to come upon one unexpectedly. My mother slowed the car and pulled to the side of the road, cautious because there was very little room to pull out of the lane without getting stuck in a ditch that divided the road from the adjoining field. We sat a few minutes — my mother, my brother, my sister, and I — observing the majestic bird. Substantial in size and commanding in posture and intensity. It may have been the first time I saw this iconic raptor up close, and it made an enduring impression on me.
It was late winter, as I recall, and the monumental oak was bare, damp from rain, imposing. It seemed the perfect perch for such a majestic bird. A tree with dignity, with gravitas. And yet, I yearned for the eagle to spread his wings and soar. We asked my mother to honk the horn. She declined, reminding us that the eagle had been there first, that startling him would disrupt him unnecessarily. I suspected that she too wished the eagle would fly. But she slowly pulled back onto the road, and we continued our commute.
Since returning to the Adirondack Coast in 2003, I’ve made a point of stopping to appreciate this handsome tree during jogs, in the early years, and bike rides, over the last decade. I’ve never spotted another bald eagle presiding over its gnarled limbs, but some day I might. In the meantime I honor the tree — vibrant leafed, laden with acorns, rusting in autumn, bare but for snow frosting — enduring across decades but otherwise virtually unchanged.
Lone Oak Haiku
Dripping after rain, a vast acorn nursery, lone oak towering. — Geo Davis
Sally & Sentry
When I shared this lone oak photograph and haiku on July 23, 2021, our friend and Essex neighbor, Tom Duca, surprised me with a previously unknown detail about this tree.
“You know Sally Johnson saved that tree. Look close. She had a cable strung between the two big limbs so they would not split apart.”
I had not known. But knowing has added to my affinity for this lone oak. A quiet, timely, essential act of kindness by an admirable woman to honor and preserve an iconic tree, our Adirondack horizon’s sentry.
It’s time for a tumble into tempest and terroir. And so I return to storms and dirt. To dirt and storms. More specifically I revisit that sudden, destructive blast that crashed through the Adirondack Coast between Westport and Essex back on August 30, 2022. (See “Storm Damage” for the gory details.) And then I fast forward to our recent dirt work, sculpting and regrading a portion of the almost century old clay tennis court back closer to what it *might* have looked like two centuries ago. (See “The Art of Dirt Work” if you’re undaunted by dirt and clay and raw site work.)
Tempest & Terroir
A derecho, they said. A straight line blast, they said. A microburst, they said in the hours after. I'd watched at the front door forehead hard against sharp-edged muntins pressing elliptical tattoos into flesh above my brows. Moments later, panting, I stood in the screen porch looking west toward the barns, filming the angry minutes, prolonged, distorted minutes, while the sky blackened and rain blurred horizontal and leaves — at first, just leaves and then clusters of leaves and then whole branches — streaked horizontally, southeast to northwest, no gravity just a fierce force ripping through our lake life as crazed and decisive and mesmorizing and efficient as a runaway subway train. Later, still spongy earth gaped in the failing light like a mute maw anguished, roots unanchored, failing, drip-dripping muddy tears in a disinterred void. Silence now except for moisture's music drumming, a chorus of water drops and weeps and seeps, melancholy melody foretelling the dirt work now underway, today, two months after the storm. Excavator guided by imagination, plans, words, hasty field notes, and the dexterity of shrewd operators slicing precisely and scraping layers of sod, then soil, then clay away. Worry wells within for savage scars unsettle, whether microburst rought or man and machine made. But Rosslyn's fertile ground — robust, resilient, and memory of ages — will nourish and nurture, lifting lofty notions and simplest seedlings from rudiments and seeds to safe sanctuary and towering glories.
Goût de Terroir
Let’s chock this post up to poetic license. Sometimes poems (and sometimes stories) are more effective than nonfiction prose, I find. Hopefully some of you will grasp what I’m grappling with, the tenuous connections I’m making, the profound faith in this healing property that has, since 2006, guided us through transition after transition.
Why poetic license? Well, for one thing the French idea of “terroir” (literally soil or earth) is usually used in reference to wine, specifically the aroma and flavor profile as derived from the environment within which the grapes have been grown and, more loosely, the wine produced. So the idea as used by those of us who enjoy wine usually encompasses the geographic location and characteristics such as soil composition, climate, and topographical siting. I think it’s fair to extrapolate from this usage a broader albeit agricultural application of the term, but I’m trying to amplify the idea a bit further. Needless to say, this poem is still a work in progress…
