Rosslyn Redux

Tag: New York City

  • Why Reboot Rosslyn Redux?!?!

    Why Reboot Rosslyn Redux?!?!

    Rosslyn Boathouse, by Essex artist and cartoonist, Sid Couchey.
    Rosslyn Boathouse, by Essex artist and cartoonist, Sid Couchey.

    Yesterday I mentioned that the day was “an especially significant milestone for me“, but I postponed further explanation. Today, I’ll touch on this personal achievement by way of revisiting another previously postponed promise. Both obliquely reveal themselves in this excerpt from my October 10, 2022 update, “Old House Journaling“.

    Yesterday marked ten weeks of old house journaling. Every. Single. Day. Two months and ten days back at the helm of this wayward, meandering, sometimes unruly experiment I call Rosslyn Redux. I emphasize the daily component of this benchmark because it’s been an important part of the goal I committed to at the end of July. Starting on August first I would resuscitate Rosslyn Redux. The why part of this equation is important, but I intend to tackle that separately. For now I’ll touch on the how… (Source: Old House Journaling)

    At the time, I introduced how I was reinvigorating the Rosslyn Redux project. Today I’m ready to explain why rebooting and revitalizing this decade and a half old initiative has taken on new significance for me. But first, that momentous milestone!

    100 Days of Journaling

    Yesterday marked a new benchmark on my quest to post… every… single… day for one year. One hundred days, so far. No skips. At least one Rosslyn update each day. Quite a few late night, last minute posts, but so far I’ve managed to squeak it out every time. Phew!

    This means that I’m more than a quarter of the way to my goal of 365 straight days. A year in the life of Rosslyn! And with over three months of consistent posting I’m cautiously growing more confident that I can reach my goal. There have been some unanticipated challenges (such as Susan falling gravely ill and landing in the hospital), but the truth is that bringing fresh vision and vigor to Rosslyn Redux has invigorated me beyond all expectations. My mission is 100% clear. My timeline and deadlines and expectations? All clear.

    Each new reflection, poem, photo essay, artifact, etc. is driving me deeper into a profoundly curious conversation with Rosslyn, compelling me to explore Susan and my passionate relationship with this property (and even our family’s and friends’ connections to this property), inspiring me to wonder how a brick-and-mortar home mysteriously became a member of our family, and challenging me to try and gather the dots into a constellation that makes some sort of sense…

    Why Reboot Rosslyn Redux?

    Once upon a time a pair of newlyweds decided to move from Manhattan to Essex because they’d fallen head over heals in love with an old home on the Adirondack shore of Lake Champlain (cue “In Old Champlain“…). They imagined a wholesome new life. A chance to reawaken Rosslyn, a dilapidated historic property, while reinvigorating themselves. They wanted to start a new chapter together. Maybe they actually needed to start a new chapter together. The last chapter had been thrilling. Passionate. Fulfilling. But also tragic. The ache of recent loss — plus the sort of soul searching and recalibration catalyzed by bereavement and unanticipated endings — stirred their new adventure no less than their capricious optimism. A couple of years to rehab Rosslyn’s house, boathouse, carriage barn, icehouse, and grounds, they surmised. Then a couple more years to enjoy the fruits of their labor while rebooting and plotting their next escapade.

    This was the plan.

    But time stretches. Reality meanders. Plans change.

    Our original timeline extended exponentially without our even realizing it. So much living. A decade. More… Our orbit was widening to include Santa Fe where I’d first lived in my twenties. We moved fluidly between the lush Adirondack Coast and the high desert southwest, happy homecomings at both. A pendulum path between two sanctuaries.

    And then tragedy struck. Susan’s mother, Shirley, unexpectedly passed away. While we were still reeling, the pandemic eclipsed everything. We hastened home and hunkered. A week. Two weeks. All spring. All summer… Rosslyn nurtured us. A sanctuary in the storm. As we grew through the loss of a mother, the loss of a mother-in-law, and the flagging morale of a nation struggling through the lingering malaise of the Covid-19 pandemic, we began to understand our relationship with Rosslyn. Although we had set out to rehabilitate her, time and again she had rehabilitated us.

    This past summer, sixteen years after Rosslyn became our home (exactly four times the number of years we’d originally envisioned living here!) Susan and I — no longer newlyweds — began to plot our next chapter. A new adventure. The details are still coalescing, but we’ve begun to reimagine our relationship with Rosslyn. Navigating this transition, growing through this bittersweet liminality is precisely why I decided to reboot Rosslyn Redux. Disciplining myself daily to relive this chapter, to ask questions and struggle with answers, to laugh and cry, to figure out if and how we have been shaped by this curious character called Rosslyn, and to begin mapping the future for her and for us. This is why I am rebooting Rosslyn Redux. And I am humbled and grateful to you for embarking on this journey with me. Thank you.

  • Leaping & Untethering

    Leaping & Untethering

    Rosslyn Boathouse, by Bill Amadon
    Rosslyn Dock House, by Bill Amadon

    In the spring and summer of 2006, when Susan and I took a leap of faith and made the decision to pursue Rosslyn as our future home, it was apparent to both of us that we were biting off considerably more than we could chew.

    Dream big. Dream a little bigger. And then leap!

    From leaping capriciously, optimistically, idealistically, and oh-so romantically into this Rosslyn adventure 16 years ago to an eventual and inevitable untethering at some point in the future, Susan and I have courted an unconventional but rewarding existence. In a sense we’ve never stopped leaping.

    Now with 20/20 hindsight (and a decade and a half of years of lessons learned and humility earned) I’m comfortable admitting that we got in over our heads. Waaayyy over our heads. Our skillset and our checkbook were too lean; our romantic outlook and our self confidence were too stout. Needless to say, that’s a fraught combination. But I wouldn’t change a single thing. Well, maybe a few things…

    I envisioned Rosslyn’s rehabilitation as an adventure, a risky adventure, but an adventure well worth the risk (and the 100% investment it would take, not the least of which was our undivided time and energy.) Rosslyn would become our love affair, our work and play, our vocation and avocation, and — despite a resolute decision early in our relationship to embrace unclehood and aunthood while remaining childfree — Rosslyn would become our surrogate child.

    In due course, heck, practically from day one, Rosslyn would eclipse literally everything else in our lives. That’s truly not an exaggeration. And, in all candor, it wasn’t particularly wise on our part. If we could do it again, we would try harder to define and observe boundaries. We would create actual limits. We would take breaks. Or at least, we tell each other that that’s what we would do differently. We would try to create boundaries. We would try to take breaks.

    But you can’t un-live life. And regrets are uncomely.

    Re-examining life, however, is not only possible. In this case it’s prerequisite to the task at hand. The tasks at hand…

    Rosslyn Dock House, by Melissa Davis
    Rosslyn Dock House, by Melissa Davis

    Leaping

    Today Susan and I are longer-term Rosslyn residents — by a factor of four! — than even our most unbridled expectations at the outset. And yet we struggle to untether ourselves from our adventure fairytale with this home, property, and community. In the months ahead I’ll explore this curious connection with place, with an old house that became our home, with a community that beguiled us from the outset and wove us into its enchanting tapestry, and also with the fact that we originally envisioned this chapter of our lives as a temporary transition, a wholesome regrouping, and how challenging it has been to separate ourselves from Rosslyn, and from this community. The complex liminal space we envisioned Rosslyn becoming way back in 2006 was not ready to graduate us after three of four years as we’d originally anticipated. And today Rosslyn’s remarkable liminality is once again catalyzing profound and important growth for us. Transformation is omnipresent, not only at Rosslyn, but everywhere. We’re living through many levels of concurrent transition. And Rosslyn, as she has since 2006, is guiding us, nurturing us, and preparing us for what awaits us down the road.

    Today’s post, though rambling and unwieldy, comes at a time when we are brainstorming and daydreaming and contemplating what it would look like to untether and disembark on a new adventure. The vision is still forming, the seed still germinating. But you’re invited to join us as we contemplate and eventually cast off.

    Bur first, before introducing the wonders we’re currently navigating, let’s hopscotch through a few earlier posts that refresh our memory about how this marvelous tale began.

    Rooted in a personal shift from wanderlust to houselust, I spent 2003 through 2005 recognizing that I was thinking differently about home and community.

    I’d made it into my early thirties without owning a home due to my intentionally peripatetic lifestyle, and despite an aesthete’s appetite for buildings and furnishing and gardens, I hadn’t the least interest in settling down. No biological clock ticking. No nesting instinct. No yen for taxes and maintenance and burst pipes and snow shoveling. No desire whatsoever for the trappings of a settled, domestic life. I understood why it appealed to others, but for me the commitments and encumbrances far outweighed the pride and financial wisdom of home ownership.

    Until recently.

    Something had changed, and I couldn’t quite figure out how or why. (Source: Paris Renovation Bug)

    Perhaps for nostalgic reasons I began looking at forgotten farms, bygone barns, meandering stone walls hemming in overgrown fields…

    The perfect place, I explained to Bruce, the friend and realtor who shuttled me from property to property, would be a small, simple farmhouse in the middle of fields with a sturdy barn and some acreage, maybe a stream or a pond or access to a river. Barns, in particular, pulled me. Secluded places with good light and views, forgotten places with stories still vaguely audible if you slowed down long enough to hear the voices. No loud traffic. An old overgrown orchard, perhaps. Asparagus and rhubarb gone feral near the barn. Stone walls, lots of stone walls and maybe an old stone foundation from a building long ago abandoned, the cellar hole full to bursting with day lilies. A couple of old chimneys in the farmhouse with fireplaces. A simple but spacious kitchen. A bedroom with plenty of windows. A room to read and write and collage the walls with notes, lists, photos, drawings and scraps. Someplace I could tinker at myself, gradually restoring the walls and plaster and roof. Timeworn wide plank floorboards of varying widths that I would sand by hand to avoid erasing the footpaths and dings and cupping from a burst pipe years before. (Source: Serene, Patinaed Fantasy)

    As Susan became more and more interested in my North Country real estate search, we both began to imagine what it would look like to spend more time in a place that pulled us like poetry, viscerally if sometimes inexplicably.

    “I’d be living a green lifestyle in the Adirondacks too. I love it here. I’d be thrilled to live here for a few years.” Peripatetic by nature, I enjoyed relocating every three to four years. Having grown up in the Adirondacks, mostly in the Champlain Valley, I had long yearned to reconnect, not just for vacation or a weekend. (Source: Postprandial Soak)

    Projecting our lifestyle fantasies onto the tapestry of the Adirondacks’ Champlain Valley became a constant pastime.

    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… [With] our collective brainstorm leap frogging forward, it all started to make a strange sort of sense, to seem almost logical. (Source: Almost Logical)

    Susan and I loved to tell stories, and increasingly we were beginning to insert ourselves into the intoxicating plot of a co-authored fairytale nestled into the Adirondack foothills, rebooting our lives and our work in a more intentional, healthier, happier way. Creating a new chapter together.

    “Are you serious? Would you really want to live at Rosslyn?” Susan persisted.

    I was unclear whether she was horrified or excited. I had made the suggestion spontaneously, without forethought, and now I felt embarrassed. I knew the idea was absurd. We both knew it made no sense at all. And yet we had returned to see the house again that morning. A second visit to a house we had already decided not to buy. Why? It exerted an inexplicable pull for both of us. It had awakened our imaginations, our fantasies, our hopes.

    “No. And yes,” I said, hedging. “No, I’m not really serious. I just suggested it off the cuff. It’s probably the stupidest idea ever, or at least the least serious idea ever. But yes, there is a side of me that would love to live at Rosslyn. I’ve felt it each time we’ve visited the house. I’m not sure I can explain it…”

    “You don’t need to,” Susan said. She was beaming. “I agree.” She rose out of the bath and wrapped a towel around her broad shoulders. “What a dream it would be, to live in that grand old home!” (Source: We could live at the Rosslyn)

    Little by little we were talking ourselves, talking each other into a transformation that would encompass virtually every aspect of our lives. It didn’t happen overnight, but the possibilities we were conjuring had begun to eclipse our desire to stay in Manhattan, my desire to return to Europe, and our realistic sense that anything else in the world could possibly make as much sense as relocating to the western shores of Lake Champlain to build a home together.

  • #ADK827

    Rosslyn Waterfront (photo by Betsy Bacot-Aigner)
    Rosslyn Waterfront in Essex, NY (photo by Betsy Bacot-Aigner)

    Are you social media savvy?

    Are you social media confused?

    On Saturday, August 27 social media stars from throughout the Adirondack region will gather in Essex, New York (@EssexNY) for an afternoon and evening of networking, learning, brainstorming and celebrating. It’s called #ADK827 and you’re invited!

    Meet the real people behind the avatars you know and love while enjoying the Essex renaissance! If you’ve never attended a social meetup, this is a great opportunity to meet and learn from your peers while enjoying a relaxing and enjoyable mini-vacation.

    Reserve your spot before it’s too late! Here’s a quick glimpse at Saturday’s events:

    Panel Discussion: “At the crossroads of writing, publishing and social media”
    11:00 AM, Essex Inn on the Adirondack Coast (FREE; limit 18; RSVP to @EssexNY asap)
    Panelists include:

    • Wanda Shapiro Adirondack-born, Los Angeles-based indie author of Sometimes That Happens With Chicken, Wanda Shapiro was recently called “the next avant-garde literary find” by The LA Independent. Since the debut of her first novel she has been compared to Hemingway, Salinger, Hitchcock, Burroughs, Marquez, and Calvino. The level of quality Shapiro is bringing to the literary fiction market combined with her indie business model has fans calling her a one-woman Random House.
    • John Warren A 25-year veteran media professional, John Warren (@adkalmanack) is a broadcast, print, and online journalist, author, and historian whose work has ranged from traditional to new media. He is the founder and editor of two popular online magazines, Adirondack Almanack and New York History, the author of two books of regional history and a weekly contributor to North County Public Radio.
    • Sarah Wilson Sarah Wilson (@swbizcom) collaborates with agencies, executives, and authors on how to navigate an increasingly fragmented media landscape with a targeted and effective approach. Current responsibilities include: Supervisor for Content, Public Relations & Social Media with AdWorkshop/Inphorm, New York’s award winning employee owned digital marketing agency; PR & Social Media Consultant with YouCast, a premiere NYC social media start up operating at the nexus of earned/owned/paid media campaigns; and Preferred Provider for marketing & PR for SheWrites.com, an online community of over 15,000 women writers.
    • Amy Guglielmo Amy Guglielmo (@amyguglielmo) is an artist, teacher, and co-author of the best-selling Touch the Art (@touchtheart) children’s series (Sterling 2006, 2009, 2010). After actively and successfully marketing Touch the Art with traditional techniques including: personal appearances, television, radio, and snail mail, she has adopted social media as her primary platform building strategy. Amy recently completed her first novel, and is using Twitter and Facebook to foster new connections in the changing world of publishing. Amy is one of the founders of the blog WhyNoKids.com. She lives in Plattsburgh, New York and Tamarindo, Costa Rica with her husband, a freelance writer.

    Social Media Luncheon
    12:30 PM, Essex Inn on the Adirondack Coast, $20/person (RSVP to 518-963-4400 by 8/25; limit 43) Join panelists and other Adirondack region social media friends for a delicious lunch at the recently renovated and reopened Essex Inn. Menu options:

    1. Herb Rubbed Grilled Salmon Salad Fresh salmon over a local farm fresh garden salad with honey mustard dressing.
    2. Grilled Portabella Mushroom Sandwich Topped with fire roasted red bell peppers and melted provolone cheese on a brioche roll, with lettuce and tomato.
    3. Archer’s Salad with Grilled Chicken Pecans, sunflower seeds, wasabi peas and sesame sticks with farm fresh field greens and a southwest ranch dressing.
    4. Bavarian Beer Burger Grilled Angus burger served on a pretzel roll with beer simmered onions, Dijon mustard and melted cheddar.

    Cookies and brownies tray included. All options include coffee, tea or lemonade. $20 per person Includes taxes and gratuities. Please call (518) 963-4400 to reserve your seat and submit your lunch option. Prepay reservations only; non-refundable. All reservations must be received by Thursday, August 25th.

    Guest Speaker: Triberr Founder Discusses Social Media
    1:30 PM, Essex Inn on the Adirondack Coast, Whether you’re new to social media or a seasoned veteran, Dino Dogan (@dino_dogan), the founder of Triberr (@Triberr), will stretch your skills and inspire your dreams! Dino’s DIY Blogger NET is a favorite go-to blog for online marketing, creative technology applications, social media pointers, creative web design tips and cutting edge social media resources and commentary. Triberr is an innovative platform for dilating the breadth and impact of your social media message.

    Triberr is a reach multiplier which tweets your blog posts to not only your twitter followers but to all of your Tribe’s twitter followers too. (deepinmummymatters.com)

    Social Media Networking and Watersports
    2:30-5:30 PM Rosslyn Waterfront (FREE; RSVP to @RosslynRedux with numbers, questions and interests) @virtualDavis invites you to experience the siren call of summer on Lake Champlain! Meet your Adirondack social media “neighbors” while experiencing the inspiration for Rosslyn Redux, a transmedia memoir of exurban flight, eco-historic rehab and marriage testing misadventure. Water skiing, wakeboarding, swimming, windsurfing, volleyball, bocce, volleyball, and house tour (4:30 PM). Beverages and snacks will be served throughout the afternoon.

    Social Media Banquet
    7:00-9:00 PM Rudder Club at the Essex Shipyard (RSVP to Rigel at 3zombies@gmail.com (preferred) or call The Rudder Club at 518.963.7700 by 8/25; limit 20) Get inspired by several Adirondack region social media leaders while enjoying a delicious meal (menu options below) at the Rudder Club at the Essex. Menu options:

    1. Pan Seared Salmon with Citrus Butter with a Summer Vegetable Medley and your choice of Jasmine Rice or Garlic Mashed Potatoes.
    2. 12 oz. Grilled NY Strip Steak with a Mushroom and Brandy-Peppercorn Demi Glace with a Summer Vegetable Medley and your choice of Jasmine Rice or Garlic Mashed Potatoes.
    3. Linguine Primavera with Summer Vegetables Sauteed Vegetables tossed with Linguine in Marinara or a White Cream Sauce.

    Dinner includes Family-style Appetizers, a House Salad and Dessert. *Cash Bar. $30 per person Taxes and Gratuities NOT included. Please reserve your seat and submit your dinner option by emailing Rigel at 3zombies@gmail.com (preferred) or call The Rudder Club at 518.963.7700. Payment information can be given by email, or you may submit a contact number to pay-by-phone. Prepay reservations only; non-refundable. Due to the restaurant being open for public business, space is limited to a total of 20 people for the entire party. All reservations must be received by Thursday, August 25th.

    #ADK827 Late Night
    7:00 until the sand man gets you! The Old Dock Restaurant For the late-nighters, the #ADK827 fun continues with live music, cool cocktails and stunning views of the ferry, Lake Champlain and Vermont’s Green Mountains. This is the perfect bookend to a day in Essex!

  • Paris, Rome, New York City and Essex

    Paris, Rome, New York City and Essex

    Living Past: Paris, Rome, New York City prepared me for Essex, NY
    Living Past: Paris, Rome, New York City prepared me for Essex, NY

    Early in the millennium I lived in Paris and Rome for a little while. Twin hardship posts!

    I shuffled back and forth on a roughly two week cycle with frequent detours to New York City to visit my then-girlfriend-now-bride. I lived out of a suitcase and a briefcase. I collected frequent flyer miles and passport stamps instead of chotchkies because they were portable and well suited to my itinerant existence.

    [pullquote]As I orbited through Paris, Rome, New York City I grew accustomed to certain similarities… but it was the differences that intrigued me most.[/pullquote]

    It was a frenetic time, juggling life on two continents and work in three countries. But it was an exhilarating and thoroughly intoxicating chapter of my still-young life. I was thirty years old and hungry for adventure. Needless to say, my jet-set life was indulging (and dilating) my appetite if never fully sating it.

    As I orbited through Paris, Rome, New York City I grew accustomed to certain similarities (ie. all three cities encourage a cosmopolitan, lively, gastronomically diverse and culturally rich lifestyle), but it was the differences that intrigued me most.

    Aside from the obvious social, cultural and linguistic differences, the way all three cities engage with their past sets them apart. All three are old — though New York and Rome bookend the age spectrum — and all three embrace their history. Architecture and urban planning are two of the most visible indications of this, and both set Rome apart.

    Rome is old. Sure, all three cities can make that claim, but Rome is really old. Ancient. And while Paris reveals Roman vestiges when quaint or historically beneficial and even highlights older archeological roots clinging to the swampy banks of the Seine, so much of the grandeur of Paris dates from the mid 1800s when Napoléon III commissioned Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann to renovate and modernize the squalid descendent of Lutetia Parisiorum.

    [pullquote]Essex is a mere freckle on the cheek of Paris, Rome, New York City, but this charming freckle simultaneously lives in the past and the present. Comfortably, happily and willfully. Essex embraces its living past…[/pullquote]

    Although Rome has periodically made efforts to modernize, there’s no escaping the city’s ancient history at every turn. New and the old are interlaced, and Romans habitually extol and condemn their ancient city in the same sentence. They bemoan the frustrations of abysmal traffic circulation, for example, and yet they pride themselves on navigating the labyrinthine quarters with alacrity, colorful language and wild gesticulation.

    Romans’ love-hate relationship with history is evident in the architecture and urban planning, but it also informs their art, design, food, music and language.

    I’ve been a collector, even a hoarder since childhood, but I credit Rome with awakening my fascination with the living past. One man’s artifact is a Roman’s quotidian necessity. The past is not relegated to museums or worse, the dump. It coexists and enriches the present.

    New York covets the new and improved, and Paris fastidiously collects and curates the most valuable gems from the past. But Rome simultaneously lives in the past and the present. Comfortably. Happily. Willfully. In a sense, Rome is timeless for this reason. It embraces its living past.

    W.D. Ross House, Essex, NY (c.1822)
    Rosslyn (aka W.D. Ross House) circa 1822 in Essex, NY

    This has been a circuitous meander to be sure, but it leads to Essex, New York, another “city” that embraces its living past. Alright, “city” is a stretch. Essex is a village, a small village. With a year-round population well under a thousand residents Essex is a mere freckle on Rome’s or Paris’ cheek. And yet this charming freckle simultaneously lives in the past and the present. Comfortably, happily and willfully. Essex embraces its living past, especially when it comes to architecture. Two centuries of heritage and life permeated by a built environment dating almost exclusively to the first half of the 19th century. Indeed many of the current residents were drawn to Essex precisely because of the historic built environment.

    While my bride and I didn’t understand it at the time — seeing our transition from Manhattan to Essex primarily as a lifestyle choice — it was Rosslyn, one of the most historic structures in town, that ultimately seduced us. And it is Rosslyn that took me by the hand and guided me back through the years.

    Through Paris, Rome, New York City to Essex in one meandering rumination, this is the journey through the coupling of past and present that has drawn me since purchasing Rosslyn in the summer of 2006.

  • Essex-Charlotte Canal

    Ever seen the Essex-Charlotte Canal? Snapshot from an icy ferry crossing on February 19, 2014.
    Ever seen the Essex-Charlotte Canal? Snapshot from an icy ferry crossing on February 19, 2014.

    The Essex-Charlotte Canal offers a chilly commute, but it sure beats 3-4 lanes of traffic jammed, coffee guzzling, angry drivers on a thruway…

    It’s not every winter that we get to enjoy the ferry commute between Essex, New York and Charlotte, Vermont (remember when the Champlain Bridge was closed for demolition/replacement?), but the “landlocked” winters certainly do make us appreciate it when Lake Champlain Transportation keeps the ferry open. And this winter has provided plenty of ice to make it challenging, but the boat, captains and crew have endured. Thank you for creating and maintaining the Essex-Charlotte Canal!

    Essex-Charlotte Canal Confusion?

    By the way, if you’ve discovered this post by mistake, you’re probably looking for the Champlain Canal, not the Essex-Charlotte Canal. The former has been in existence since 1823, about the same time that Rosslyn was constructed (and probably one of the ways that non-local materials were transported to Essex for construction, furnishing, etc.). The latter, the “Essex-Charlotte Canal” I reference in this post, is a figment of my icy imagination. And the collective experiences of the LCT captains and crews, and most every ferry commuter who’s crossed Lake Champlain in the last month or so! But you won’t find it on any maps…

  • Connection with Place

    Connection with Place

    Connection with Place (Source: Geo Davis)
    Connection with Place (Source: Geo Davis)

    I was recently accused, tenderly but definitively, of being obsessed with locale, and more precisely, with my connection to place. As a lifelong wanderer, this struck me as slightly ironic. And accurate.

    By now my fixation on hyperlocality and placeness (aka the poetics of place) have become inextricably woven into the entirety of Rosslyn Redux, the robust and resilient fiber that holds it all together, or — as popularized in the parlance of contemporary talking heads — the “connective tissue” of this protracted inquiry into our decision to purchase and rehabilitate Rosslyn as a foundational platform for our small family’s life (and lifestyle) reboot.

    From 1999 to 2003 I was living and working in Europe. Mostly Paris, France. But Rome, Italy had become a second base by the end of that exciting chapter, a period that started with teaching and coaching at the American School of Paris and evolved into co-founding and launching Maison Margaux, an exclusive vacation rental startup, and Margaux Europe Group, a boutique travel platform. My business partner and I had based these businesses in New York City, and this third base of my globetrotting existence became even more important in the summer of 2001 when Susan and I discovered one another and tumbled head over heals into an intoxicating transatlantic romance.

    In those years I prided myself with what I had dubbed immersion travel rather than tourist travel. The Margaux Project was founded on this distinction. Deep travel. Authentic travel. Meaningful travel. Transformative travel. Human-centric vs. travel brochure scrapbook travel… My love affairs with Paris and Rome (indeed even with New York City) were complex and enriching and multifaceted. We wanted to provide a means for discerning clients to experience Paris, Rome, (and eventually Barcelona, intended at the time to become our third property) with the nuanced richness; genuine, unadulterated texture; and personal intimacy that we had both come to appreciate.

    But I was a committed and unabashed global nomad. By choice. By conviction. The dissonance didn’t really phase me at the time!

    Wanderlust vs. Connection to Place

    This fundamental duality — a peripatetic wanderer drawn to unique locales and connection to place — is at the heart of the thread I call Wanderlust to Houselust. I’ve learned through our Rosslyn years that I am both migratory and rooted. For many years I understood myself as a perennial vagabond, and I celebrated the carefreedom and independence that my work/life amalgam allowed.

    But building a loving family and a profoundly fulfilling lifestyle around placeness (Rosslyn, Essex, Lake Champlain, the Adirondacks, the North Country,..) has taught me how important community and connection to place are to me. It’s also helped me understand that I’m not either/or… not nomad OR potted plant.

    Life, my life, is more complex than I’d understood despite developing Maison Margaux and Margaux Europe Group around the philosophy of immersion travel — journeying more authentically and meaningfully, interacting rather than travel-skimming. Certainly my need for connection to place was there, but I didn’t recognize what it was. Now I do. And I understand that the meaningful authenticity, the human-to-human interaction, the belonging that had drawn me to a specific type of travel was precisely what fueled my early enthusiasm for living in Essex. It was connection to place that had always enticed me. I just didn’t know it.

     

  • Serene, Patinaed Fantasy

    Apartment buildings lining the south side of E...
    East 57th Street between First and Sutton (via Wikipedia)

    Accustomed to living out of a suitcase, I pendulumed back and forth between Manhattan where Susan was wrapping up a degree in interior design following a decade-long career in video production, and Westport, New York, where both of our parents owned homes and where we’d met a couple of years prior.

    Susan had recently refinished a one bedroom apartment in The Galleria, and she was itching to sell it and start a new project. I was intrigued by the prospect of collaborating on a project and plugging my recent Paris experience into a tired but dignified New York apartment, but the Adirondacks were pulling me. After almost half a lifetime living in cities, I yearned to return to the rhythms and pleasures of rural life.

    My idealized notion of a country house had its roots in a small farm that my parents had bought in Washington County while still living in New York City in the 1970s. Initially a getaway for my recently married parents trying to balance life and careers in New York City and later, albeit briefly, a full time residence, The Farm underpins my love for countryside and provides my earliest childhood memories.

    The perfect place, I explained to Bruce, the friend and realtor who shuttled me from property to property, would be a small, simple farmhouse in the middle of fields with a sturdy barn and some acreage, maybe a stream or a pond or access to a river. Barns, in particular, pulled me. Secluded places with good light and views, forgotten places with stories still vaguely audible if you slowed down long enough to hear the voices. No loud traffic. An old overgrown orchard, perhaps. Asparagus and rhubarb gone feral near the barn. Stone walls, lots of stone walls and maybe an old stone foundation from a building long ago abandoned, the cellar hole full to bursting with day lilies. A couple of old chimneys in the farmhouse with fireplaces. A simple but spacious kitchen. A bedroom with plenty of windows. A room to read and write and collage the walls with notes, lists, photos, drawings and scraps. Someplace I could tinker at myself, gradually restoring the walls and plaster and roof. Timeworn wide plank floorboards of varying widths that I would sand by hand to avoid erasing the footpaths and dings and cupping from a burst pipe years before.

    Although I’d painted the picture often enough, my budget and unwillingness to abandon the serene, patinaed fantasy resulted in a few false starts but mostly a very clear idea of what I was not interested in buying. On the upside, I came around and helped Susan select and renovate a coop in a 1926 McKim, Mead and White prewar located on 57th Street just off Sutton Place. An elegant apartment in a handsome building. Great bones, view and sunlight enhanced with a top-to-bottom environmentally responsible, non-toxic renovation. A success!

    Though there were occasional fireworks when our aesthetics and convictions clashed, we enjoyed working together and decided to look for a North Country property that would suit both of our interests…

  • Paris Renovation Bug

    Paris Renovation Bug

    Paris Renovation Bug

    Starting in about 2003 I initiated an unfocused real estate hunt for a “fixer-upper” in the Adirondacks’ Champlain Valley. I’d returned from four years in Europe with enough savings to justify some idle time, a reprieve I hoped to plough into a long languishing novel while tinkering with the vestiges of a web-based business I’d launched in Paris a few years before.

    But I couldn’t shake the renovation bug that had bitten me quite unexpectedly while bringing a luxury vacation rental to market in Paris’ Faubourg St. Germaine.

    I’d made it into my early thirties without owning a home due to my intentionally peripatetic lifestyle, and despite an aesthete’s appetite for buildings and furnishing and gardens, I hadn’t the least interest in settling down. No biological clock ticking. No nesting instinct. No yen for taxes and maintenance and burst pipes and snow shoveling. No desire whatsoever for the trappings of a settled, domestic life. I understood why it appealed to others, but for me the commitments and encumbrances far outweighed the pride and financial wisdom of home ownership.

    Until recently.

    Something had changed, and I couldn’t quite figure out how or why.

    I’d spent the better part of a year and a half immersed in the acquisition, renovation and marketing of a grand Haussmannian property that promised tourists an opportunity to enjoy Paris à la Parisienne. My business partner and I joked that it was “Versailles in the heart of Paris”, which was a gross exaggeration, but fifteen foot ceilings, 3,200+ square feet of living space including three master suites, a grande salon, a petite salon and a formal dining room invited exaggeration. Magnificent marble fireplaces, intricate plaster moldings, hardwood floors and meticulous finish details exuded Parisian elegance by the time we started booking the accommodation, but it hadn’t always looked so inviting.

    The property underwent a top-to-bottom transformation between the day we received the key and the day we shot the photographs for our brochures and website. Half of the property had been gutted and rebuilt from scratch. One bathroom was remodeled and two new bathrooms were created from scratch. Walls were moved, electrical systems were rewired. Carpets were ripped out and herringbone hardwood floors were hand sanded and resealed. Magnificent crown moldings were painstakingly restored, and sconces, chandeliers, and period hardware were refinished.

    No architect. No designer. No engineer. Just outsized self confidence and a hepped up learning curve. I scribbled construction drawings on walls and fumbled through French and Portuguese until contractors seemed to understand what I wanted. With the Lebanese contractors I gesticulated, made funny sound effects and scribbled some more. That we completed the project at all was a miracle. That the results were exquisite, a mystery that still awes me. Though I’d grown up assisting my parents with a couple of renovation projects, I’d never before undertaken anything so ambitious or complex. Or so rewarding.

    Although our business plan involved duplicating the process in Italy and in Spain, the woman I’d been dating for two years lived in New York City, and after two years of cycling through Paris, Rome and Manhattan on a roughly two week cycle, I opted to trade the business for the woman I loved. I dissolved my interest in the business, packed up my apartments in Paris and Rome, and moved back to the United States.

    [To be continued…]

  • Hickory Hill and Rosslyn

    The Ross Mansion, Essex, NY
    The Ross Mansion, Essex, NY

    I recently happened on this antique postcard of the Ross Mansion (aka Hickory Hill) which was built by the brother of W.D. Ross, Rosslyn’s original in the early 1820s. Hickory Hill still presides handsomely at the intersection of Elm Street and Church Street. I’m still sorting out the Ross family tree, intricately woven into the history of Essex, New York, and I’ll do my best to paint a clear picture as it emerges. For now, a couple of interesting references include:

    Hickory Hill & Rosslyn Link

    [pullquote]Hickory Hill’s setting in its own spacious grounds on the ridge which overlooks the village and the lake adds much to its beauty. Rosslyn commands a superb view of the lake and the Green Mountains in Vermont.[/pullquote]

    The interesting connection between Rosslyn and Hickory Hill is illuminated in Living Places: Essex Village Historic District.

    “Hickory Hill” on Elm Street, and “Rosslyn” on the Lake Shore Road represent the residences of the wealthy merchants and lawyers who dominated Essex in the early days of its prosperity. Two-and-a-half-story brick structures whose design combines Georgian and Federal elements, both “Hickory Hill” and “Rosslyn” were built before 1830. The building of “Hickory Hill” (1822) built by Henry Harmon Ross for his bride, was taken from a five-bay design in Salem, New York. It displays great grace and lightness in its Palladian window, Neo-classic portico, and elegant cornices. Its setting in its own spacious grounds on the ridge which overlooks the village and the lake adds much to its beauty. “Rosslyn”, the William D. Ross house, originally constructed as a three-bay side hall dwelling, was expanded (1835-40) into five bays. Presently restored to its appearance in 1840, it commands a superb view of the lake and the Green Mountains in Vermont.

    William Daniel Ross

    [pullquote]Rosslyn’s original owner, William Daniel Ross, dealt in lumber, iron and ship-building in Essex.[/pullquote]

    Another genealogical reference appears in Ancestry.com:

    DANIEL ROSS: born February 23, 1764, Duchess County, NY; son of Daniel Ross (c 1740- c July 22, 1795) and Jerusa Howard; married Elizabeth Gilliland June 1784; one of the original settlers of Essex, NY on lands given to his wife by her father William Gilliland; had five children- Elizabeth, William Daniel, Henry Howard, Edward D., and Sara Jane; divorced Elizabeth c July 1815; Captain of Militia, Justice of the Peace, merchant, first Essex County Judge, and most prominent citizen; died at the home of his son Henry, Hickory Hill, Essex, NY March 10, 1831 at 67.

    ELIZABETH GILLILAND ROSS EVERTSON: born 1764 in New York City; first child of William Gilliland (c1734-1796) and Elizabeth Phagan (c1740-1772); married Daniel Ross June 1785; had five children noted above; divorced c July 1815; married John J. Evertson by April 1, 1823; Evertson died by 1829; after Daniel’s death in 1831, she returned to her son Henry’s home, Hickory Hill, Essex, NY and died there August 3, 1847 at 83.

    I will continue adding Ross family references, but for now, here is an interesting if somewhat garbled overview of William Daniel Ross from Caroline Halstead Barton Royce as recorded in Bessboro: a history of Westport, Essex Co., N.Y. (Note: corrections are mine and possibly erroneous.)

    William Daniel Ross dealt in lumber, iron and ship-building in Essex; his wife was a sister of John Gould, Aid on Gen. Wright’s stafi; and his brother, Henry H. Boss, (afterward Gen. Ross,) was adjutant of the 87th at the battle of Plattsburgh.

    If you can point me toward accurate history, genealogy, etc. for the Ross family of Essex, New York, please contact me. I would be much indebted to you. Thank you in advance.