Rosslyn Redux

Tag: Susan Bacot-Davis

  • Voyeuristic Glimpses & Mosaic Mirages

    Voyeuristic Glimpses & Mosaic Mirages

    Voyeuristic Glimpses: Carley, June 9, 2020 (Photo: Geo Davis)
    Voyeuristic Glimpses: Carley, June 9, 2020 (Photo: Geo Davis)

    Before you shift uneasily in your seat and survey your surroundings nervously, I’d best prologue my post with an assurance that nothing unseemly is in store. Exhale. Voyeuristic glimpses, yes, but only as the subject of an overdue clarification.

    Voyeuristic Glimpses

    After bricks and mortar, land and lake, residents (human and canine), Rosslyn’s blog is the most visible — and maybe even the most accessible — part. And if the blog is by definition a digitally distributed diary, then it offers voyeuristic glimpses into Susan and my relationship with Rosslyn, a circa 1820 home and property on the Adirondack Coast of Lake Champlain. We can debate how candid or unfiltered they are, of course, because the experiences these coup d’œil capture are inevitably shaped and edited by my perspective. As such the metaphorical “fly on the wall” is more aspirational goal than reality, and the voyeuristic glimpses captured in these blog posts do not pretend to be much more than editorialized field notes. Shoot for objectivity; settle for subjectivity. Caveat emptor.

    Voyeuristic glimpses aside, the blog is only one constituent part of Rosslyn Redux. In sum, it’s actually a sprawling, multimodal mess! Er, I mean… it’s a multidisciplinary *experiment*.

    Voyeuristic Glimpses: icehouse door, December 27, 2022 (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
    Voyeuristic Glimpses: icehouse door, December 27, 2022 (Photo: R.P. Murphy)

    Mosaic Mirages

    Beyond chronicling the stumbles and growth spurts of Rosslyn’s historic rehabilitation (along with the inevitable ups and downs of our romantic runaway to this lakeside Elysian), Rosslyn Redux is an exploration. An experiment. A creative endeavor. A lyric essay — from Old French essaimeaning attempt or trial — calling upon collage and composting as often as language and logic. In many respects, Rosslyn Redux aspires more to conceptual art than a home renovation blog, more to performance art than a midlife marriage memoir. It’s an epic poem mosaic (a constellation of poetry fragments) crossed with an archeological exhibition crossed with an inside-out inquiry into homing and homeness crossed with a serial meditation on rootedness and itinérance and longevity and impermanence crossed with a genre bending memoir crossed with a sketch and artifact swollen scrapbook. 

    Hhhmmm… If it’s all this, or even close to all this, then isn’t it just a cluttered attic too deep and dusty to decipher?

    Sometimes. So far.

    Voyeuristic Glimpses: contemplative Pam, December 13, 2022 (Photo: Hroth Ottosen)
    Voyeuristic Glimpses: contemplative Pam, December 13, 2022 (Photo: Hroth Ottosen)

    But I’m endeavoring to evolve Rosslyn Redux beyond an avalanche of artifacts into a cohesive experience. Into a sojourner’s stopover, perhaps even the sort of sanctuary that Rosslyn has been for us.

    My initial foray into building something durable out of our relationship with Rosslyn lead to bookish brainstorms (and hundreds of pages of drafts.) But conversations with editors and agents, pitching what was most readily definable as a memoir in those days, consistently came up against the same setback. Whether genuinely or politely intrigued by the ingredients for our Rosslyn story, everyone advised me to refocus the story, to restrain the narrative arc to my relationship with Susan. Newlyweds swapping Manhattan for the bucolic Adirondack Coast where they anticipated simplifying their lives while licking their wounds. Newlyweds nesting in a tumbledown money pit. A poet and a designer dive into home renovation… what could go wrong?!?!

    I was also consistently and repeatedly advised to limit the story to one year. Two or more years is too messy! (Of note, editors’ and agents’ discomfort with the sprawling scope and calendar of our renovation was also a familiar refrain with our parents who were were increasingly nervous about the ever attenuating timeline and dwindling coffers.)

    The trouble was, this was as much a story about Rosslyn as it was about the two of us. And so much more. And “the story” felt to me like more than a story. I envisioned an immersion. A three-dimensional immersion. I envisioned inviting the audience into the experience more like a long-stay houseguest, not just a reader. And, the truth be told, I was as keen to explore the limitations of language as I was to document the historic property’s rehabilitation; our hyperlocal reboot; a meandering meditation on home; etc.

    Needless to say, I wandered and wondered and gradually — accepting that I was lost — I succumbed to inertia.

    But Susan and my relationship with Rosslyn did not end. The sanctuary salved us, and the adventures reignited our wonderlust. And little by little clarity has emerged, a plan, a map forward. Born of necessity. And that, my friends, is why the last five months have been so different than the previous. And while the coming months will continue to catalyze and coalesce a map. Perhaps even a clear and cohesive multidisciplinary work to offer my virtual houseguests.

  • Totally Incompatible

    Carriage house and ice house
    Image by virtualDavis via Flickr

    My fixer-upper forays with Bruce Ware and other local realtors evolved when Susan joined the search. She shared my dream of an old farmhouse surrounded by open meadows with views and sunlight. She liked barns and was even receptive to my occasional flights of fancy about converting an old barn into a home.

    But our notions of size and simplicity were less aligned. And Susan was particularly keen on finding a Lake Champlain waterfront property. “What’s the point of having a place that’s not on the lake?” she asked repeatedly as if the answer were self evident.

    The odds of finding an old farm on Lake Champlain (bygone barns “In Old Champlain“) were slim enough, but the prospect of finding a simple, inexpensive property on the lake was totally implausible unless we shifted our thinking toward seasonal camps. South of Westport and north of Essex there were many small properties tucked along the lakeshore that Bruce insisted on showing us despite repeatedly explaining that they were not what we had in mind.

    We also looked at inland farms and interesting old homes in small towns and hamlets, “Just so you can see what’s out there…”

    We enjoyed looking and brainstorming, but we were growing frustrated with the increasingly diffuse range of properties we were seeing. We had lost our focus.

    Bruce was trying to show us all of the options available which in equal turns dilated and frustrated our search. But there was an even more fundamental problem: Susan and my interests were not perfectly aligned.

    Although a farm on the lake (especially an old barn that could be reimagined as a home) was proving an impossible ambition, our imaginations were piqued on several occasions by totally dissimilar and totally unlikely properties.

    An old “Great Camps” style summer house in Westport overlooking Lake Champlain’s Northwest Bay intrigued me until I realized that this pedigreed manse adjoined — indeed partially overlooked — the town’s sewage treatment plant.

    A handsome slate roofed barn, still square after a century or more standing at the crest of an immense field just south of Westport, beguiled me for a while. I imagined a lofty open plan; exposed, rough hewn beams; magnificent views in all directions. But the seller was unable or unwilling to subdivide the field and barn from a much larger farm which included additional fields, an immense dairy barn, various other building for hay and equipment storage, a “pond” for storing cow manure and a large square farmhouse with cupola. And in the end it was a relief to Susan, because, after all, this magnificent barn did not stand on the shores of Lake Champlain.

    And then there was Rosslyn, a Merchant-Ivory film set for The Great Gatsby’s Adirondack prequel. A century earlier. Located on the lake in Essex, it included a boathouse I’d loved since I was a child, a carriage barn, an ice house, and plenty of stone walls. But there were no fields and too many buildings. And the house was too big. And too run down. Way too run down. And the price tag was beyond unrealistic.

    During our first visit Susan and I had both known immediately, instinctively, conclusively that Rosslyn was not for us. Purchasing this once stately but now desperately dilapidated property was a bad idea. A really, really bad idea.

    The expense alone. There was no conceivable short term return on investment. None.

    And the amount of time it’d take to understand all of the property’s problems, let alone begin to fix them, to build her back to her former glory? It was incomprehensible.

    But money, scope, logistics, that was just the tip of the iceberg. Long deferred maintenance, decades overdue; a gutted rear wing with failing floors suspended from cables that stretched through the middle of rooms; crumbling foundations; faulty electric, plumbing and heating; a boathouse that was one ice flow away from a watery grave; an ice house with corn cribbing walls and a collapsed roof. The current owner had dedicated the better part of four decades of his life, four decades — full time — to renovating Rosslyn and yet it was disintegrating around him.

    Buying Rosslyn was totally incompatible with our means, our lives and our plans. And yet Rosslyn seduced us. Susan and I visited and then, months later, revisited the property, each time musing about its potential despite knowing that we shouldn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t ever own it.

    Our increasingly unfocused search — Susan and my notions of the perfect fixer-upper diverging and converging unpredictably — must have vexed Bruce despite his perennial good humor and patience. Though we did periodically visit additional properties when Bruce called with new listings that he thought might appeal to us, our enthusiasm for discovering the perfect spot gradually waned. And our enthusiasm for Rosslyn, for brainstorming and daydreaming and scheming some way to transport this once stately property into our new home, gained momentum.

  • Rosslyn for Sale

    Rosslyn for sale, November 2004
    Rosslyn for sale (photo credit Jason McNulty)

    Susan and I were driving back to Rock Harbor after visiting Rosslyn, an early 19th century home in Essex, New York, which our realtor had just shown us for the second time in several months.

    It was spring. At least a dozen sailboats speckled Whallons Bay as we wound south along the edge of Lake Champlain. Small white caps, light wind, bluebird skies above. Two fishing boats trawled between the beach and Split Rock where a glimpse of Vermont was visible within the cleft.

    We veered away from the lake and up Couchey Hill toward one of the most picturesque views in the Champlain Valley. Hurricane, Giant, Dix and the Jay Range were silhouetted against cloud specked blue skies to the east. An undulating patchwork quilt of hayfields and tree lines stretched to blue green foothills clumped against the Adirondack Mountains.

    Half an hour can vanish in a single breath while watching a sunny day expire here. Even at midday the view is an open-ended invitation to linger.

    But with minds and mouths racing, we did not even slow down on our way back to Rock Harbor. We were sorting engagements, worrying over deadlines and synchronizing schedules for the week ahead. After a quick lunch, we would drive back to Manhattan. Although the trip could be as quick as five hours, Sunday afternoons were typically slower with increased traffic around Albany and returning weekenders adding to the congestion.

  • Apple Still Life

    Apple Still Life

    Seven Apples, an apple still life, August 10, 2022 (Source: Geo Davis)
    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?

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

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

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

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

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

    Is Home a Place?

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

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

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

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

    Is Home a Relationship?

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

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

    Is Home a Feeling?

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

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

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

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

  • Quest for Permission

    Quest for Permission

    Quest for Permission (Photo: Geo Davis)
    Quest for Permission (Photo: Geo Davis)

    I am on a quest for permission. Permission from Susan, from Rosslyn, even from family and friends. Most of all I am on a quest for permission from myself. This morning a serendipitous swirl of accidental-coincidental happenings helped me realize this. Chief among them (and the rightful recipients my profound gratitude) in the order they fluttered across my morning:

    • newly arrived “intense black” (actually deep green) fountain pen ink from Wordsworth & Black;
    • a joy-filled (cheerful words and jolly doodles) letter from my mother, Melissa Davis;
    • timely, astute, perspective bending counsel from Virginia Woolf; and
    • even more timely but equally astute, epiphanic insight from Nick Bantock.

    In the photograph above, a few artifacts hint at the serendipitous series of events that, to my arguably esoteric way of thinking, fall into a phenomenon I refer to as rhyming. Sometimes the universe rhymes, or as poet Jeffrey Harrison might offer, if you’re receptive to it, you might hear “The Singing Underneath“. I’d best stand aside and let him guide us.

    “just beneath the world we see,
    there is a silent singing that breaks out
    at moments, in flickering points of light.”
    — Jeffrey Harrison, “The Singing Underneath”

    The fountain pen, clogged with dry ink, awaiting new ink, had been a metaphorical reminder that I was stuck. Clogged. I wasn’t flowing as I needed to be. But new ink arrived just in time. The crusty piston pulled clean water in and pushed it out again. Unclogging with each plunge of the piston. Anticipation as I drew up the new ink. And then lines on paper. Perfect. Flowing again.

    My mother’s 2-page note, complete with her unique illustrations, was an attentive parade of grateful acknowledgments gathered during a recent adventure together. Unselfconscious. Whimsical. Honest.

    Virginia Woolf’s words needn’t be explained, only shared.

    “He chooses; he synthesizes; in short, he has ceased to be a chronicler; he has become an artist.” — Virginia Woolf

    I don’t know where I came across these words, and I’m failing now to find them. Perhaps I’ve misattributed this quotation? This morning at least, it doesn’t matter. The shift in perspective is precisely what I needed to consider. to prepare me for the keystone concept that gathered it all together.

    Artist and author, Nick Bantock, shared a reflection on Griffin & Sabine that resonated right for me.

    THE idea of writing a love letter to oneself sounds both indulgent and cheesy, and yet done in the name of self-acceptance rather than narcissism, I feel there’s much merit to the act.

    I think when I wrote the following passage, from Sabine to Griffin, I was doing exactly that, I was articulating an inner need to bringing together and unite my opposite selves, my logical and intuitive personas:

    “I have loved you in every manner that my imagination could contrive. I have wanted you so deeply that my body sang with pain and pleasure. You have been my obsession, my passion, my philosophers stone of fantasy. You are my desire, my longing, my spirit. I love you unconditionally. Do you hear me, Griffin? Do you see that I cherish you beyond question, that you have nothing to prove to me? You are making your journey to secure yourself. I am already tethered to your side. If you can love yourself, as I love you, there will be no dislocation — you will be whole. Bring yourself home to me and I will immerse you in every ounce of tenderness I possess. Sabine.”

    Looking back, I can see that whilst the tale of G and S was certainly an expression of romantic longing, it was also a quest for permission. I was trying to give myself, and others, the encouragement to be both opposite and whole. — Nick Bantock (Source: Facebook, November 14, 2022)

    Eureka! In revealing what he’s come to understand about what compelled him to create the Griffin & Sabine books, his words struck that ineffable something that Susan and I are grappling with and that I’ve been exploring in Rosslyn Redux — wondering, yearning, exploring, growing toward, backsliding and second guessing, and then venturing tentatively out again — over the last couple of years. I genuinely believe that he has captured succinctly and lucidly our journey: it’s “a quest for permission.”

    I’ve referenced frequently, perhaps too frequently, an ongoing transformation in our relationship with Rosslyn, an evolution in our scheming and prognosticating and brainstorming. I’ve acknowledged liminality and the sometimes bittersweet, sometimes conflicted emotions that manifest suddenly and unpredictably as we attempt to navigate from comfort and stability toward the unfamiliar, unknown. At last I’ve stumbled on what I’ve needed to know. My quest for permission needn’t require such wayward roving. It is first and foremost my own consent I’m questing after. And part of accepting this is granting myself permission to embrace art above chronicle. I’ve suspected this. Dithered. Wondered. Worried. But this morning a confident confluence is flowing. And I’m ready…

  • We could live at Rosslyn

    We could live at Rosslyn
    We could live at Rosslyn

    “We could live at Rosslyn,” I said.

    “What?” Susan sounded startled. “You mean buy Rosslyn and live there?”

    “Why not? If we lived there, if it were going to be our home instead of just an investment, maybe we could justify buying it.”

    We had joked about how much time and money it would take to make Rosslyn habitable, categorically dismissing it as an investment. And yet it clearly had captured our hearts. If it were our home and not a short term investment, then maybe the criteria were different. Maybe the potential was different. Maybe the risk was different.

    “Will you be relocating here full-time?” a realtor had asked a month or two ago while showing us a house.

    “Uh, maybe, yes, we’d like to,” Susan had lied, glancing at me awkwardly. Some locals disliked out-of-towners buying, renovating and reselling, so we kept quiet about our plans to do so. Our hearts sank.

    “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!”

    “Really?” A wave of relief and excitement rushed over me. What a dream indeed. I stood and wrapped my arms around Susan as we drowned each other out, pent up monologues bursting out. We sounded manic as we catalogued our dreams. Waterskiing from Rosslyn’s pier still visible in photographs from the mid-1980’s. Awakening in the yellow bedroom brimming with sunlight. Entertaining our families in the evening amidst mingling aromas of arborvitae and grilling hamburgers. Eating cheese fondue next to a crackling fireplace with friends after a day of downhill skiing. Watching the Fourth of July parade from the front steps with our nephews, still fascinated with fire engines, antique tractors and costumed clowns. Recalibrating our urban rhythm to the comings and goings of the Essex-Charlotte ferry. A pair of effervescent hummingbirds flitting from blossom to blossom in the flowerbeds that we would coax back to life. Puttering around in the carriage barn on Sunday afternoons. Tossing bocce balls in the side yard while nursing gin and tonics and watching Vermont’s Green Mountains slide into pastels, then monochromes, then memories…

  • 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…

  • Pandemic Puppy: Carley Corona

    Pandemic Puppy: Carley Corona

    Pandemic Puppy: Carley Corona (Photo: Geo Davis)
    Pandemic Puppy: Carley Corona (Photo: Geo Davis)

    We lost our last Labrador Retriever, Griffin, in the months preceding the pandemic. Only a few months later we lost Susan’s mother, the best mother-in-law I could have conjured from the depths of my imagination.

    And then we plunged into the pandemic.

    In those early weeks that bled into a month, then two months, we decided to follow through with a breeder with whom we’d placed a deposit months earlier. There’s more to this chapter of the story, but for present purposes let’s fast forward to the spirited fluff all that arrived in the late spring. Named Carley in memory of Susan’s late parents (Carter and Shirley), our pandemic puppy’s middle name (embraced enthusiastically by me, and begrudgingly by my bride), Corona, remains a constant reminder that a pandemic that tried to grind us all down still offered some glimmers of gold. This gentle Lab filled some gaping holes in our family with enough love to heal us. Queen Carley!

    The photograph at the top of this post shows Carley (left) and Mae (right), a 10-month old service dog that Susan is helping train and acclimate to house life. The dogs are taking a break on Thanksgiving, rebooting for the arrival of dinner guests.

    In the May 30, 2020 snapshot above, Carley was perfecting the skill that has served her well for two and a half years. The art of the snooze…

    Two weeks later, on June 14, Carley welcomed me home after a mid-pandemic road trip. Perfect homecoming after two surreal weeks of COVID-19 dodging logistics.

    On October 1, 2020, Carley was already starting to look much like she does now, albeit a slighter version of her now more Rubenesque countenance.

    A snowy morning in Santa Fe a week and a half ago, Carley’s first snowfall this season…

    And last weekend, with even more snow, our small family enjoyed some preseason skinning and skiing at about 10-11k feet above sea level on a spectacular sunny Sunday.

    Given that these Rosslyn Redux posts can flit around achronologically (poetic license, humor me?), and given that we’ve had three yellow Labs in succession — Tasha, Griffin, and Carley — I’d try to better clarify which dog is which. Time for some overdue editing!

  • Rosslyn’s Game Room

    Rosslyn’s Game Room

    Rosslyn Icehouse 2006 (Source: Geo Davis) Icehouse and future “game room” in autumn 2006 (Source: Geo Davis)

    Game Room v1.0

    When we bought Rosslyn in 2006, the icehouse was on its last legs. The inspector advised us to abandon it (or rebuild it from scratch). Although the actual written document he submitted once the inspection was complete offered a less terminal outlook for the then-century old outbuilding, our in person dialogue on the morning of our inspection was anything but encouraging. So when I told my bride that I wanted to convert the icehouse into the “men’s club”, she smiled and agreed that the proposed use — as a party barn — seemed appropriate (but the moniker would not be adopted). I envisioned a rustic open interior which could serve as a game room with pool table, dartboard, etc. And it could double as my writing retreat. I felt more confident than the inspector that we would be able to salvage the structure, prevent the roof from caving in, and stabilize the north and south walls from further corn-cribbing.

    From structural intervention to “weathering-in” the structure, I envisioned a leisurely rolling year-to-year DIY project.

    In the fall of 2006 we gutted the structure, removing the interior wall paneling, emptied out many loads of sawdust (originally used for insulating the icehouse), and removed the ceiling / loft floor, and the interior walls separating the main ice storage room from the anteroom and “refrigerated” pantry. Here’s a glimpse into initial phase of progress.

    We were relieved to discover that the structural rot was in fact considerably less severe than originally anticipated. Our spirits soared. I could imagine friends gathered around a fireplace rehashing the sail, cross-country ski, or hike we’d just enjoyed. And I could imagine books and papers stacked over a pool table, poem drafts strewn across the floor, sketches pinned to the wall,… Frankly it was pretty easy to conjure up a perfect outbuilding retreat to house some of the best parts of our new Essex life.

    This daydream resurfaced often in those early months. A mental getaway from the elegant domesticity of the house we were in the thralls of rehabilitating. I’m not sure why the term “game room” popped up initially, nor why it stuck. In reality, the vision was part studio-office and part playhouse for adults. A pool table. A dart board. Definitely a fireplace. Comfortable. Unprecious. Unbuttoned.

    N.B. Before fast forwarding to the almost second incarnation of Rosslyn’s game room, you might want to check out a couple of brighter photos of the icehouse in the autumn of 2006 during the early rehabilitation process.

    Game Room v2.0

    As rehabilitating the main house (and the boathouse) consumed more and more of our time, focus, and resources, the icehouse project slid down the priority slope. Postponed. Postponed again…

    As rehab’ing the icehouse, repurposing it really, from an outbuilding that had served the previous owner as a woodshed, into a more relevant utility building for us, shifted from punch list to pipe dream, it left some desires unfulfilled. Given the formality of Rosslyn’s living room, we still wanted an informal “hang out” space. What if the room underneath the living loom, excavated painstakingly in the first phase of our project could become the game room? Bench seating around the perimeter, a pool table in the center, and only a flight of stairs away from the bar! It seemed like a good workaround.

    In 2007 we made that decision to conceive of the new found space beneath the living room as our future game room.Here are some early photographs of that process.

    I will revisit this unique room elsewhere, including photographs throughout the rehab cycle. It’ll blow your mind. (Hint: this was originally a crawl space with literal drifts of mold so horrifying that it nearly killed our purchase!) For now I’ll just conclude this post focused on Rosslyn’s ever-future game room. That’s right. It didn’t happen here either. Another transition in our preferences, priorities, etc. resulted in adapting the game room — well before acquisition of pool table or hanging of dart board — into a fitness room. So, long story short? We have no game room. Yet.

    N.B. If you missed my Instagram photos, you might enjoy the better visuals of the pre-concrete pour and the action shot of Mike “Dutchy” Ahrent screeding.