Tag: Rhubarb

The Farm Backstory

As we hurtle toward completion of the icehouse rehab, I catch myself in barn reflection. Again. Yes, I consider the icehouse a barn. And, yes, migrating my books and artifacts and works in progress from a bedroom-turned-office (aka study/studio) in our home into the almost renovated icehouse is enthusing me beyond reason. It’s also catalyzing reverie and rumination into my farm backstory. Let’s dig a little deeper?

Undoubtedly my affinity for barns is rooted, albeit subconsciously at times, in early to mid 1970s recollections of a tumbledown farmstead tucked into a wooded holler in Cossayuna, New York.

The Farm in Cossayuna, New York (Painting: Louise Coldwell)

The painting above, made by my godmother, Louise Coldwell, has hung above my study/studio fireplace for the last 15 or so years. In this façade of the first home I remember, the two small windows at the top, right were my bedroom. Below my bedroom, the dining room. To the left of the entrance doorway, the living room. My parents bedroom was above the living room. I say, “the first time I remember”, but there were others. An apartment in Manhattan and another in Bronxville. Also, overlapping, a house in Glens Falls and another in Lake Placid. Itinerant years when my parents were still primarily living and working in New York City and then orchestrating a shift upstate. I’ll sit down with them to try and map out these years and lodgings. I muddle these memories in part to offset the fact that The Farm stands out for me. I’m not 100% certain why, but it is the first home the main impression on me, a home that still conjures poignant flashbacks.

Recently I’ve been sifting through memories and mementos of those few-but-formative years, and I’m coming to suspect that my association between barns — especially old, weathered, rural farm barns — and “home” (as well as “homing” and basically all matters related to “homeness”) is intrinsically rooted in my early childhood adventures at The Farm.

Omnipresent: OMC and The Farm (Photo: Geo Davis)

Note the painting, partially cropped, in the photograph above. For a decade and a half this is what I saw when sitting at my desk, if I turned away from Lake Champlain to look at the fireplace. And if you allow your eyes to drift down to the cluttered mantle above the fireplace, you’ll see a black-and-white photograph.

That’s me as a shaggy, bowl-cut youngster, with OMC, a family friend and neighbor when we were at The Farm. He was also my godfather and, in many respects, a surrogate grandfather. The initials stand for Old Man Coldwell, a nickname he used to sign the pottery he made (including the enormous bowl featured in this post: “Generosity of Friends: Lemons from Afar”).

Memories of The Farm and OMC overlap for me. Not always, but often. His presence and guidance, his physicality — apparent in this photograph — and his wonder-welling words. Our time together was guided by adventure. Riding an old tractor through a field to round up a cow that had gotten out. Riding an old tractor through a field to round up a cow that had gotten out. Walking to a distant meadow where he kept a rowboat and fishing rod ready on a pond bank. Squatting among strawberry bushes hunting for the largest, ripest fruit. Harvesting honey from a hive and eating it, thick and warm from a spoon. Massaging clay and squishing it through my fingers when he and my mother were potting…

At The Farm with OMC circa 1974-5

My parents’ friendship (and eventual falling out) with OMC remain intertwined with their memories of The Farm as well. I’ll inquire what if any memories they might share. Until then, I’ll loop back to the property itself.

My parents, living and working in New York City, had purchased an 1840s farmhouse on 85 acres in Greenwich, New York five months after getting married. I was born less than two years later. Although The Farm served primarily as a weekend getaway for the next five years, it dominates the geography of my earliest childhood. A stream of nostalgia gilded memories flow from this pastoral source: exploring the time-worn barns, absent livestock except for those conjured up by my energetic imagination and the swallows which darted in and out, building nests in the rafters, gliding like darts through dusty sunbeams; vegetable gardening with my mother; tending apple, pear and quince trees with my father; eating fresh rhubarb, strawberries and blackberries; discovering deer and raccoons and snakes and even a snapping turtle. (Source: The Farm)

Bucolic. Burnished, no doubt, by time’s spirited sentimentality.

I weave The Farm in Cossayuna (aka “The Farm“) into a conversation, a blog post, a social media update. Why? Not sure. Maybe the omnipresence of The Farm as a defining point of reference in my own life? (Source: Preservation by Neglect: The Farm in Cossayuna)

I’ve explored elsewhere the overlap between my lifelong fascination with barns (and barn vernacular) and my early memories at The Farm. The chicken or the egg? Which came first?

Woven into the earliest tapestries of my childhood are fond associations with barns. (Source: A Barnophile of Bygone Barns)

I wander my patchwork memory map and wonder, wandering, wondering, where is the margin mocked by tides and waves, the littoral boundary of fact and fiction, fluctuating with wind and moon? What was The Farm? And what have I imagined into it?

I inevitably distort history, omitting and abbreviating and emphasizing, distilling the vast landscape of data into vignettes. These accrete gradually, revealing the narrative design of my story. (Source: Remembering and Recounting)

Are these memories of The Farm in Cossayuna accurate? Reliable? Are they actually defining details in my life, reliable anchors tethering my current contemplation of homeness?

“Life is not what one lives, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.” — Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Living to Tell the Tale (Source: Remembering and Recounting)

This rings true to me. We are our story. Our stories. And The Farm, embedded inextricably into my attraction to Rosslyn, has provided a sort of scaffolding for many of my homing initiatives since about 2005.

As I bring this meandering meditation to a close, it’s worth noting that I’ve shared images of The Farm over the years. Always the farmhouse, never the barns. Peculiar that I don’t have any images of the barns. I’m almost certain that I took a few photographs when I visited within the last decade, but I haven’t managed to put my fingers on them. I will keep looking, but in the meantime, I’ll ask my parents if they might have an old photograph or some other representation of the outbuildings at The Farm.

June 5, 2023
Ready for Rhubarb Time?
Rosslyn Rhubarb Time (Photo: Geo Davis)

Spring along the Adirondack Coast tempts us with plenty of enticing seasonal flavors, but a personal favorite is the sweet tart medley of local maple syrup and homegrown rhubarb. Although we’re still a little shy of rhubarb time, the maple syrup is standing by, and my imagination is conjuring up this springtime staple. It’s as perfectly paired with a steaming cup of morning tea or coffee as with grilled protein and a spring mixed green salad.

Rosslyn Rhubarb Time (Photo: Geo Davis)

The images in today’s post, rhubarb photos that I posted on Instagram back in 2021, were inspired when Pam thrust a healthy handful of rhubarb stems into my grateful paw one morning. They’re a pinch more poignant now because our rhubarb crowns were accidentally rolled under last spring and we haven’t yet propagated a new generation.

Now that I’ve dangled the palate puckering temptation of rhubarb sautéed in maple syrup I’m going to ask your forbearance as I take a brief detour. I’ll get back to the super simple recipe in a moment.

But first an amuse-gueule: rhubarb haiku.

Rosslyn Rhubarb Time (Photo: Geo Davis)

Rhubarb Haiku
```
Still chill, spring soil parts. 
Green, red, unclenching, stalking,
sweet tart rhubarb.
```
When spring’s still inhospitable weather and clammy soil don’t seem to suggest this potent plant coming forth, just then, it does. Courageous and colorful. A fist unfurling from the earth, stretching out into impossibly lush, almost tropical, foliage. It is rhubarb time again.

Perhaps this tangle of tartness and sweetness, cool climate growth and tropical semblance, is the allure of rhubarb time.

Rosslyn Rhubarb Time (Photo: Geo Davis)

Rosslyn Rhubarb Time (Photo: Geo Davis)

Rosslyn Rhubarb Time

Rhubarb was one of my first forays into homegrown edibles back in 2007. I transplanted several crowns from my parent’s Rock Harbor property. We did not yet own the acreage west of the barns, so I hadn’t even begun to conceive of the gardens and orchard that we’ve been fortunate to develop since acquiring the first portion of our backland from Greystone in 2008/9.

I propagated the transplanted rhubarb crowns directly to the south of the carriage barn within the stone foundation of a long gone lean-to addition to the barn that may have at one point housed animals judging from the fertile soil. Combined with sunlight and heat reflected off of the carriage barn’s southern facade, this proved a productive microclimate for rhubarb (and asparagus) in those early years.

When fortune cast her benevolent gaze upon us, allowing us to add +/-28 acres to Rosslyn, I transplanted the rhubarb (and the asparagus) to a new location about 100 feet west of the carriage barn, where the plants would benefit from plenty of sunlight. These hardy perennials served as reliable forerunners for today’s productive vegetable and fruit gardens.

Their propagation served another symbolic, if sentimental, importance to me. Both — Rosslyn’s rhubarb and Rosslyn’s asparagus — were transplanted from existing beds that my mother had previously transplanted from our childhood home (see “Homeport in Wadhams, NY”) to Rock Harbor a couple of decades prior. A continuity reaching back to childhood, a lineage of homes, and a meaningful association with my mother, the self taught gardener who exposed me as a boy to the uniquely fulfilling practice of germinating, propagating, cultivating, harvesting, preparing, and sharing homegrown food. A perennial interconnectedness.

Rock Harbor Rhubarb Time

Turning back the clock a dozen years to May 31, 2011 I posted about harvesting Rock Harbor rhubarb some 5-6 years prior. (If lost in the math, the following refers to the time when Susan and I were contemplating the still-unlikely possibility of moving from New York City to the North Country. Rosslyn was still more playful pipedream than reality.)

We walked down the road from the tennis court and stopped off at my parents’ house, still closed up for the winter. It would be several weeks before my parents arrived in Rock Harbor for the summer, and by then the asparagus would have gone to seed, so we picked enough for dinner and enough extra to bring back to the city for another meal.

I also picked a fistful of rhubarb to sauté with maple syrup for dessert. Susan disliked rhubarb, but I loved the lip puckering tartness. The taste transports me instantly to The Farm. (Source: The Farm)

Rock Harbor Rhubarb (Source: Geo Davis)

Much as our Rock Harbor rhubarb bridged time and place, Rosslyn’s rhubarb had become a seasonal reconnection bridge to a timeless tapestry of family, gardening, meals shared, and home oases.

Before I slide further down the slippery slope of sentimentality, I’d better get on with that recipe!

Maple Rhubarb Recipe

This maple rhubarb recipe may well be the simplest how-to you’ve ever come across. Sometimes the best recipes are the simplest!
- Trim rhubarb ends to remove any leaf remnants (which are toxic to humans due to high levels of oxalic acid.)
- Trim rhubarb ends to remove earthy bits.
- Chop rhubarb into 1/2″ to 3/4″ pieces.
- Fill a saucepan about halfway full of chopped rhubarb, and place on low heat.
- Add a cup of water and a teaspoon of vanilla.
- Cover the sauce pan and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring periodically to ensure even sautéing.
- Once the rhubarb has begun to break down evenly, add a dash of cinnamon
- Add maple syrup to taste.
- Top this quick dessert/snack with whipped cream, vanilla ice cream, or a dollop of vanilla yoghurt. (If you’re dairy free, as I am, substitute your preferred alternative!)
The sweet tart flavor profile of sautéed maple rhubarb is so unique, so scintillating, so memorable that my taste buds are tingling as I write these words. Enjoy.
May 28, 2023
The Farm

Rock Harbor Rhubarb (and memories of The Farm!)

We walked down the road from the tennis court and stopped off at my parents’ house, still closed up for the winter. It would be several weeks before my parents arrived in Rock Harbor for the summer, and by then the asparagus would have gone to seed, so we picked enough for dinner and enough extra to bring back to the city for another meal.

I also picked a fistful of rhubarb to sauté with maple syrup for dessert. Susan disliked rhubarb, but I loved the lip puckering tartness. The taste transports me instantly to The Farm.

My parents, living and working in New York City, had purchased an 1840s farmhouse on 85 acres near Greenwich, New York five months after getting married. I was born less than two years later.

Although The Farm served primarily as a weekend getaway for the next five years, it dominates the geography of my earliest childhood. A stream of nostalgia gilded memories flow from this pastoral source: exploring the time-worn barns, absent livestock except for those conjured up by my energetic imagination and the swallows which darted in and out, building nests in the rafters, gliding like darts through dusty sunbeams; vegetable gardening with my mother; tending apple, pear and quince trees with my father; eating fresh rhubarb, strawberries and blackberries; discovering deer and raccoons and snakes and even a snapping turtle.

May 31, 2011
A Barnophile of Bygone Barns
Yesterday I meditated a minute on bygone barns. Ancient farm buildings. Tempered by time, tempted by gravity, and sowbacked beneath the burdens of generations, these rugged utility structures retain (and sometimes gain) a minimalist elegance long after design and construction and use fade into history. My meditation was meandering and inconclusive. In part this was due to the wandering wonder these timeworn buildings inspire in me. And in part it was because my observations are still evolving and inconclusive. I’m not a barn expert, an agricultural architecture preservationist, or even a particularly astute student of barns and farms. But I am a barnophile.

Barn·o·phile /bärnəˌfīl/ noun (from Greek philos ‘loving’)
1. 1. a connoisseur of farm buildings
  2. a person with a fondness for structures used to house livestock, grain, etc.
  3. an admirer and/or collector of agricultural outbuildings
Aside from the hubris I’ve just exercised in birthing this barnophile definition, I’m generally inclined to a humbler and less presumptuous relationship with the mostly agrarian artifacts we categorize as barns.

[As an unabashed barnophile with a] weakness for wabi-sabi, I’m especially keen on bygone barns.

By “bygone barns” I’m conjuring an entire class of rural farm and utility buildings belonging to an earlier time. Classic lines, practical design, form following function, wearing age and even obsolescence with pride,… I’m even smitten with buildings so dilapidated that they’ve been reduced to their skeletal essence by the forces of nature. Sunlight, moonlight, weather, wildlife, and vegetation permeate these carcasses. The sparse assembly of materials — beaten by the elements for more years than anyone alive can definitively claim to know — endure erect, monumental, lavishly adorned with forgotten functions and the patina of passing time. (Source: Bygone Barns)

Barn Vernacular (Source: Geo Davis)

But why do forgotten farm buildings enchant me? What reason lurks beneath the tidy text, what foundation for my unusual fascination with these vestiges of a simpler, more local, perhaps even a slower time? Katie Shepard, so very rarely off target, suggests this childhood reminiscence might play into my barn-centric attraction.

My parents, living and working in New York City, had purchased an 1840s farmhouse on 85 acres in Greenwich, New York five months after getting married. I was born less than two years later.

Although The Farm served primarily as a weekend getaway for the next five years, it dominates the geography of my earliest childhood. A stream of nostalgia gilded memories flow from this pastoral source: exploring the time-worn barns, absent livestock except for those conjured up by my energetic imagination and the swallows which darted in and out, building nests in the rafters, gliding like darts through dusty sunbeams; vegetable gardening with my mother; tending apple, pear and quince trees with my father; eating fresh rhubarb, strawberries and blackberries; discovering deer and raccoons and snakes and even a snapping turtle. (Source: The Farm)

As usual, Katie is right. Woven into the earliest tapestries of my childhood are fond associations with barns. This was undoubtedly further reinforced during our years at Homeport given the inordinate amount of time that my brother, sister and I occupied ourselves in the mysterious old barn complete with ballroom and servant’s quarters long since adapted to other uses. And in my grade school years my siblings and I memorized Dylan Thomas’s “Fern Hill” to recite as a birthday gift for my father. I wish I could take credit for this creative gift giving tradition, but it was my mother, Melissa Davis, who gently guided the three of us each winter to select a poem that would appeal to my father, and then to memorize it during our daily 45-60 minute commute to school each morning and and each evening. Three days after Christmas, on my father’s birthday, we would recite the poem together, and (with one notable exception that’s better reserved for another day) my father enjoyed the gift, leaning back, sometimes closing his eyes, and listening attentively. I think “Fern Hill” may have been the best received, and it became a go-to for family recitation over the years, hypnotically weaving itself into the ethos of our childhood the way a prayer might.

Boundaries of a Barnophile

There comes a time to focus the “philos”, or at least to try and narrow or delineate the subject of interest.

I’ve talked around my fascination with barns, barn architecture, barn construction, and barn aesthetics… But I haven’t outlined the tenets for my enduring intrigue, nor have I articulated exactly what I mean when I refer to a barn vernacular. It’s time to draft at least a preliminary look at my love of barns. […]

In the vernacular vocabulary of quintessentially North American architecture, the barn endures as a practical yet proud icon of rural living. […]

Although my fascination with barn vernacular isn’t limited to Yankee barns, it is my most consistent and encompassing vision.(Source: Toward a Barn Vernacular)

In other words, I’m inclined toward classic geometry, roofs steep enough to shed water and snow (with a particular fondness for 9:12 pitch), and unembellished details. And I will always favor bygone barns to new construction. The quality of workmanship and materials stands out, but so too does the story stretching across decades, even centuries.

I consider aging utility buildings — barns, boathouses, icehouses, sugarshacks, etc. — to be at least as intriguing as old houses. More sometimes. So many relics, unselfconscious, candid. Less penchant for concealing, fewer makeovers, more concurrently present years and lives. Sometimes it’s the old, banged up subjects and objects that look the best. Thank goodness for that! (Source: Horse Stall Haiku)

And what of other barn-like buildings, rural utility buildings designed and constructed after the same manner?

School Bus Stop Ahead (Photo: virtualDavis)

They appeal to me as well. In fact, the agricultural DNA isn’t essential to me at all. I suppose I’m somewhat “barn androgynous”, equally smitten with similarly origined buildings even if they’ve never seen a horse, cow, chicken, pig, or hay bale.

That said, it’s worth acknowledging that the architecture of New England barns, Yankee barns, and even — drifting a little further southeast — tobacco barns are especially appealing to me. And if it’s fair to assume that my affinity is at least partly nostalgia-driven, then it’s probably worth adding another influence the those sited above. Four year of boarding school in Old Deerfield, Massachusetts definitely instilled in me an appreciation for early colonial building, and there were a couple of barns that still loom proud in my memory.

Beyond Boundaries

Although I wish I could gather these strings and call it caput, I must further complicate the boundaries I’ve endeavored to delineate above.

While there’s something alluring about the volume and the efficiency of barns, the unpretentious posture with no attempt to conceal functions or mechanism, scale isn’t essential. The small corn crib above, for example, intoxicates my imagination nearly as much as the grand barn at the top of this post.

Baked into my identity as a barnophile, into this somewhat esoteric aesthetic and philosophical appetite, is a tendency to stretch my definition of barns to include other similar outbuildings.

While Rosslyn didn’t fit squarely into the vision of an old farm or a collection of dilapidated barns that I originally was hunting for, this stately home does have three remarkable outbuildings, all three of which lured me as much as the house. In fact, well before we completed our top-to-bottom rehabilitation of the home, we tackled the icehouse, boathouse, and carriage barn. All of them were on the brink. Actually much of the house was as well. But just as we committed to salvaging the home, returning it to its former grandeur, we likewise undertook laborious, challenging efforts to salve the icehouse, boathouse, and carriage barn. All buildings were dilapidated, but the icehouse and boathouse were both succumbing to the omnipresent challenges of weather and neglect.

I’ve posted plenty in the past about Rosslyn’s boathouse, the lakeside folly that beckoned to us from the beginning. For a whimsical mind like my own, smitten with boating adventures — real and imagined — becoming irreversibly enchanted with our small dock house protruding out into Lake Champlain was pretty much inevitable. Although its mission has always been tied to watery locomotion, it is for all practical purposes a sort of barn. A diminutive lakeside barn purpose-built for boating. A utility outbuilding conceived and specifically confected to serve the Kestrel just over a century and a quarter ago.

And Rosslyn’s icehouse, occupying much of my attention these last few months as we cartwheel through an ambitious rehabilitation and adaptive reuse project, is likewise a barn. We often refer to the carriage barn and icehouse, standing as they do side-by-side, as “the barns”. As a utility building designed to complement the architecture of the carriage barn and home, it was nevertheless first and foremost a utility building constructed to support the residents with year round cooling at a time when refrigeration did not yet exist. It was an ice barn!

And so you see perhaps the elasticity of my identity as a barnophile. A barn might not immediately appear to be a barn. But the rudiments, the purpose, and likely the longevity have profited from the heritage of barn building. And this, my friends strikes me as the right place to wrap up. If this this post was intended as a more intimate look at the romance of bygone barns, those that have endured a looong time and even those no longer viable, then I’ve covered my bases. And too, I’ve revisited my original hope of locating an old barn to convert into a home, a hope that has not altogether faded away.

In fact, Susan and I have been for a few years brainstorming a barn-inspired for the future, our future, that just might begin to emerge in the years ahead. Stay tuned…
January 3, 2023
Leaping & Untethering

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

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.

October 26, 2022