We’ve been finalizing a timely transition from porosity to fenestration in the icehouse rehab. Framed but temporarily concealed apertures have been cut out and transformed into doorways and windows. Jamb extensions, sills, and trims — carpentry confections that conjoin and integrate discrete elements into a cohesive architectural whole — are finally complete inside the icehouse. Exterior trims are still in the works.
When Apertures Become Windows (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
In the photograph above the north facing windows in the main room exemplify the coalescing of elements, framing a view of… gravel and dirt!
This view is evolving as I type. Stone walls and stone steps will define the levels and the transitions between them. In the near ground, a lawn will yield to a stone bordered area of plantings that will bridge the lower elevation outside the deck to the upper elevation where the volleyball and croquet court will once again be located.
When Apertures Become Windows (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
With the jamb extensions complete and the window trims installed the next step will be to scrape paint from the windows and install the hardware. Plenty of convergence and completion happening each day…
The art of home is a tidy title with an unpretentious posture. And yet it’s idealistic and evocative, ample and ambitious. Frankly, its restrained and self contained first impression is a little misleading. Maybe even a little ambiguous. What do I even mean? I’m not offering a catchy epithet for design and decor. Nor architecture. And yet, it certainly may include some or all of these. When I describe the art of home, I’m conjuring several things at once.
In conjoining art and creativity with home-ness, I’m alluding to my own personal outlook on an intrinsic relationship between the two as well as an aspirational goal. Home isn’t science. Or, home isn’t only science (or even mostly science.) Sure, there’s science and math and all manner of practical, detail and data driven inputs in transforming a house into a home. But there’s much more. There’s a profoundly personal, subjective, intimate relationship at play in the act of homemaking. And, in the best of circumstances, essential circumstances in my opinion, home becomes a sanctuary for creating, an oasis for art.
All of this binds art-ing and homing. The art of home is a look at the homeness of art and the art of homing. It is an attempt to discern what allows one’s domestic sanctuary to transcend mere utility (a garage to cache one’s car, a grill to sear one’s supper, a nest within which to sleep, a shower with which to wash away the sleep and sweat), to transcend the housing function and become a place of growth and nurturing, an incubation space, a revitalizing space, a dreaming and dream-fulfilling space,…
In the photograph at the top of this post you can see the icehouse, mid-rehabilitation, tucked in beside the carriage barn, both frosted in snow like fairy tales illustrations or gingerbread confections. After a decade and a half my slowly percolating art of home has matured from a pipe dream into a concept into a clutch of sketches into construction plans into a creative collaborative of many. And for a few short weeks I’m privileged to participate daily, to engage in a real and hands-on way after participating from afar, participating virtually. It’s a peculiar but exciting transition. An ongoing transition.
The Art of Home: Poem Excerpt
I’ve been excavating through layers of creativity compressed into, and coexisting within, my notion of homeness. While shaping a house into a home is in and of itself a creative art — indeed a nearly universal creative art, even among those quick to volunteer that they are not artistic, not creative — I’m deeply curious about my awn associations with home as a cradle and catalyst of art. I’m trying to tease apart these different layers of art in a still embryonic poem, so I’ll include only a section about gardening, a creative pursuit that I inherited from my mother decades ago.
...composing a garden,
my own personal patch,
from selecting seeds —
corn, radishes pumpkins,
tomatoes, and sunflowers —
to turning the soil,
working compost
into last summer's
stems and stalks,
into clay clodded dirt,
into July-August hopes.
Watering and weeding,
thinning, scarecrowing,
suckering, and staking...
Composing a garden is but one of the many instances that the art of home means something to me. Cooking. Writing. Telling stories. Pruning the orchard. Entertaining guests. Landscaping. Drawing. Adapting old buildings into new lifestyle enabling and enriching spaces.
The Art of Home: Documentary
At the heart of Rosslyn Redux is a quest to discern and describe what I’m learning about the art of home. But there is still more question than answer. I’m still untangling my thoughts, still reaching for some sort of clarity that might improve my ability to communicate concisely what I have found so captivating, and why it has obsessed me for so long.
But I’m not there there. My journey is ongoing. So I will, for now, offer another perspective on the art of home, a captivating documentary that obliquely sheds light upon our Santa Fe / Essex home duality.
Two indigenous artists create new works reflecting on their tribal homelands, the Wind River Indian Reservation. Ken Williams (Arapaho) is a Santa Fe art celebrity and Sarah Ortegon (Shoshone) is an up-and-coming actress in Denver. Both artists travel to Wind River Reservation to reconnect with their ancestors and present their art work to a somewhat isolated community. (Source: The Art of Home: A Wind River Story,PBS)
Intertwined with Sarah Ortegon’s and Ken Williams’s extended meditation on the relationships between art, creative expression, identity, home, culture, family, and belonging are the perspectives of other Native Americans including George Abeyta who touches on home as a place of strength.
“Your home, it’s a place of your family. It’s a place of warmth and comfort and strength and happiness. It’s the place where were you look forward to going because that’s your stronghold. That’s your place of prayer.” — George Abeyta
In the context of beadwork Abeyta is examining it feels seamless and comfortable the way we moves from beading motifs to home as a bastion of strength, as a stronghold. Also a space where family, warmth, comfort, happiness, and even prayer coexist. Perhaps even where they are rooted, where they thrive. The subject of his reflection, a beaded ornament akin to a necktie, is an intricate work of art, and as such it functions as a vehicle or a vessel to showcase and honor these fundamental elements. This notion of home, and more specifically the art of home, as a sort of sacred space for strength and belonging, for identity and connectedness, for family and for happiness resurfaces throughout this documentary. I encourage you to make time (just under an hour) to appreciate it from beginning-to-end.
I’m slightly obsessed with transitions and betweenness. Liminality and interstices. Metamorphosis, reawakening, and transformation inevitably weave themselves into my words about gardening and historic rehabilitation. In fact, in a not altogether exaggerated sense, Rosslyn Redux is a kind of carefree contemplation of thresholds, the art of thresholds, and the artifacts of crossing thresholds…
From carpentry fiasco (boathouse gangway) to carpentry triumph (house deck), from summer to autumn (bittersweet seasonality), from hale and hardy to COVID crash dummy, from perennially postponed icehouse rehab to 100% timely reboot, from Adirondacks to southwest,… We are awash in transitions! (Source: Transitions)
Supi and Peter Fabricate a Charactered Threshold (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
One of the most notable changes in the icehouse rehab is a considerable increase in apertures, transparency, and porosity. With an eye to more seamlessly integrating the interior and exterior experience while reducing the potentially confining ambience of such a small (approximately 18’ x 30’) structure, we have introduced lots of glass.
Windows and doors blur boundaries between the enclosed environment and the exterior views, landscape, hardscape, decks and courtyard. Within the interior we’ve also endeavored to maximize transparency and porosity by embracing an open plan.
Only the bathroom is fully enclosed. Other zones (entrance, coffee bar, main room, and loft study/studio/office) flow into one another permitting the small volume to feel more ample. Design continuity and viewshed integration enhance this sense of openness, favoring cohesion and harmony over spatial subdivision by function. And yet, subtle transitions (i.e. a doorway threshold, the staircase and banister to loft.) are present and necessary.
In these instances delineation and boundaries serve us. Sometimes the utility is practical. For example, the loft is enclosed with a banister that extends from the top of the staircase to the north and south knee walls. Although code compliance is the most obvious reason for this, the underpinning logic is that a railing enclosing the second-story loft ensures that we do not accidentally pitch off the edge. The porosity of railing and balusters affords transparency, but the sturdy boundary ensures safety, as much a visual cue (caution, stay back, etc.) as a functional restraint.
Flooring transitions and how they help differentiate space and use warrant careful consideration. This is true in the icehouse where the top stair riser meets the loft floor, representing a meeting of dissimilar materials (painted poplar staircase and sealed beech flooring) and a blurring of function (stair tread and flooring). It is also true in the elm and garapa threshold that I conceived and Peter created for the icehouse bathroom doorway.
The highly charactered elm — grown, harvested, aged, milled, and finished on Rosslyn’s property — will integrate with the ash and elm flooring in the main floor of the icehouse. (Source: Elm and Garapa Threshold)
Today’s update considers the passage from the east entrance and coffee bar area into the main room of the icehouse. In addition to a shift in function and feel, the 8’ flat ceiling in the entrance and coffee bar area opens up to a 2-story cathedral ceiling in the main room. Accentuating this transition with a pair of columns that flank the passageway adds a touch of drama and playfulness given the incongruity of the diminutive space and the dominant pillars.
The elm and ash flooring will run east-west, so a threshold of sorts, seamlessly conjoining while differentiating the two zones presented an opportunity. Thresholds — door treads, doorsills, etc. — signal the ending of one space and the beginning of another space. But they often function as weather barrier and/or doorstop as well, resulting in a profile raised above the floor plane. I did not desire this threshold to deviate from the floor. Subtler than a doorway threshold, I nevertheless wanted to offer a visual cue that a transition is being made between two zones, a perhaps subconscious delineation of usage.
I explained my vision, first to Hroth and subsequently to Peter, for a threshold running perpendicular to the flooring and wide enough to frame the column plinths equally around the outer perimeter. Fabricated out of the same ash or elm that we are using for the floor, I proposed a pair of book matched planks that would cause pause and invite interest. I asked them to think of this over-wide threshold, not as a throwaway intended simply to bridge otherwise similar areas of flooring, but instead as an integrated piece of art. A contiguous embellishment within the broader “tapestry” of the floor. Character-rich grain and coloration. Precise joinery, perhaps an inlaid bowtie if necessary and aesthetically pleasing. An interstitial experience/object as bold and intriguing as the columns that rest upon it.
Peter Conjoins Charactered Boards for Threshold (Photo: R.P. Murphy)
As you can see, Peter has begun to transform the vision into reality. A mesmerizing tableau to be tread upon. The art of thresholds.
Call it a 184-day streak. Or call it dogged determination. Either way I have 181 days to go until I reach my goal. And with each new post, each small victory, I am growing more and more confident that I will accomplish my mission of 365 posts, one complete year of daily updates beginning on August 1, 2022 and concluding on July 31, 2023.
So how to commemorate this midpoint milestone? With 6 months down and 6 months to go, it feels momentous enough to pause and praise my good fortune. But should this benchmark be acknowledged with a celebratory salute? A solemn ceremony? A toast, my first spirited sip after 31 days of teetotaling? (Yesterday marked the conclusion of my 7th or 8th, maybe even my 9th “dry January”.) Or perhaps a decadent dessert after a sugar free month? (For some sadomasochistic reason I’ve decided in recent years to add a sugar fast to alcohol abstention during the month of January, a timely recovery after the excesses of Thanksgiving-through-New Years…) A new month (ie. rabbit-rabbit) ritual transcending the delicious dinner I shared with Jim and Mark two nights ago at Juniper?
Slow Cooked Whole Rabbit: cumin, blood orange and smoked paprika glazed, corn tortillas, chimichurri, salsa fresca, refried beans (Source: Juniper at Hotel Vermont)
Maybe a romantic romp with my bride who suggested, upon retrieving me from the airport yesterday, that we celebrate a belated anniversary to compensate for the one we missed this past autumn when she was unwell. 17 years of marriage and 21 years together. I’m incredulous even as I type these numbers. Neither seems remotely possible. But my 50th birthday seemed similarly inaccurate this past spring, and I’m obliged to accept it.
Or how about we honor the 200th anniversary of Rosslyn’s front façade, ostensibly completed in 1823? (Apparently 3/5 of the building — the two window portion to the north of the entrance, as well as the entrance itself — was completed in 1820. The remaining 2/5, including the two windows to the south of the entrance and comprising the dining room downstairs, a guest bedroom and Susan’s study on the second floor, and another guest bedroom on the third floor, was most likely finished three years later in 1823, fulfilling the the architectural promise of this classic Federal home with Georgian and Greek Revival elements.
An auspicious confluence of milestones and anniversaries. I’m choosing to interpret this is a good omen even as I nevertheless acknowledge that I’ve meandered from my original mark, hoisting the flag at my halfway point, mid-journey in my post-a-day quest. I recall an earlier waypoint in this quest, an update I published on October 10, 2022 when I was still just shy of halfway to where I am today.
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. (Source: Old House Journaling)
Then as now my emphasis on everyday journaling remains a top priority.
Over the last few years, Susan and I have scrutinized our hopes and expectations with Rosslyn. We have reevaluated our plans as they originally were in 2006 when we embarked on this adventure and as those plans evolved during the decade and a half since. It’s been an extended period of introspection, evaluating our current wants and needs, endeavoring to align our future expectations and goals with respect to one another and with respect to Rosslyn, and challenging one another to brainstorm beyond the present.
There’s no question but that our impromptu quarantine at Rosslyn during the spring and summer of 2021 catalyzed some of this soul-searching. But so too have the many life changes in recent years. Our gradual shift toward Santa Fe as our base and Essex as our getaway rather than the other way around. The loss of Susan’s mother. My parents’ retirement near us in Santa Fe. Our nephews and nieces growing up and expanding their orbits far beyond Rosslyn. A perennially postponed but driving desire to collaborate on a smaller, efficient, creative lakeside home of a different DNA altogether, an unrepressable will to imagine into existence the sort of slow cooked (albeit shapeshifting) and highly experimental homestead we originally envisioned in 2003-5 when we first began to explore our Adirondack Coast homecoming. And there is that hiccup in our 2006 original timeline, our 2-4 year vision for homing at Rosslyn until we’d managed to reboot and reground, until we were ready for our next adventure. Those naive expectations were eclipsed — willingly and joyfully — within the first year or two.
So what does this have to do with my daily Rosslyn updates?
Everything.
In committing to this daily practice last summer I was acknowledging that I had some serious work to do. In order for us to constructively sort through out collective vision for the future, to determine whether we’re too fond of Rosslyn to proceed with plans for designing and building the lakeside retreat we’ve conjured over the years, to honestly assess our willingness and our readiness to hand this sanctuary over to another family, both Susan and I are undertaking the sort of “deep work” that will hopefully enable us to make some decisions. I’m talking about 100% honest, prolonged consideration. Rosslyn has quite literally been a part of our family, and not just our nuclear family. Can we untangle her? Are we willing to let her go? Can we joyfully pass the privilege on to new custodians? Or are we not yet ready?
For me this daily practice, digging deep into sixteen and a half years of living and loving Rosslyn, is my time and place to work through these questions. To sort it all out. To find peace and confidence in my convictions. And six months in, I believe that I’m on the right path. Not all the time. There have certainly been some tangles and tangents that got away from me before I realized what was happening and reined them in. But the constant conversation — *internal* as I study, reflect, and compose these installments as well as *external* as I share these updates and then interact with many of you — is reinvigorating and reawakening Rosslyn from her comfortable slumber (and me from mine!)
So this midpoint milestone is a profoundly significant benchmark for me personally. It’s the tangible representation of my germinating confidence and clarity. It’s the measurable mean between a conflicted outlook and the conviction I’m hoping to discover over the next six months. In a real sense, it’s a halfway point toward the sort of rehabilitation that we’ve been undertaking with Rosslyn’s buildings and grounds since 2006, only in this case the journey is profoundly personal. Instead of historic architectural rehabilitation, it is restoration of my innermost wonder, my romantic dreams, and my idealistic hopes. With passion reawakened and a map forward becoming more apparent each day, I’m tempted to see this benchmark as the sort of celebration enjoyed upon finally reaching a base camp, a lofty peak viewable in the distance foreshadows the ambitious ascent ahead but also offers a majestic affirmation of the reachability and proximity of the summit. Today marks just such a halfway point, an opportunity to appreciate the accomplishments so far, and an incentive to forge ahead.
A few days ago I came across a provocative Facebook post that artistNick Bantock had shared on December 30, 2022. The date’s not particularly notable, but the author is. Familiarity with Bantock’s work adds context and texture to the explanation about his creative process, specifically how he moves from found ephemera to finished artwork.
I keep an in-between tank, a collection of part-constructed smaller pieces that are in a state of flux or transition. Resonating bits that touch or brush-up against one another, in a pre-morphing box (or in this case, a studio drawer)… Ideas are rarely plucked out of the ether, in my experience they come from creating an environment where happy accidents and surreal collisions can best occur. (Source: Nick Bantock, Facebook, December 30, 2022)
I’d be wise to leave his words to stand alone. Unsullied. Undistorted. Unaccompanied. A beacon.
And I’ll try.
But trying isn’t enough. Temptation is building, like a wave rising higher, gaining momentum, wisps of foam falling from the curled lip.
And so I succumb. Slightly.
Creative Collisions
The image above, an illustration of Rosslyn’s boathouse by Essex resident, Paul Flinn, was documented by Tony Foster. Between upcycling garapa decking boards into distinctive wall paneling for Rosslyn’s icehouse rehab he popped into Essex Town Hall, spied this handsome architectural sketch, snapped a photo, and pinged it through the ether to me.
Collaborating with creative characters; emphasizing the merits and possibilities of adaptive reuse while repurposing collected curios, salvage, and surplus; and generally endeavoring to create an environment where “happy accidents and surreal collisions can best occur” just might be working. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Tony.
Happy Accidents
Fusion. Collage. Combinatorial creativity… It’s been immensely satisfying to help catalyze the morphing. And it seems that everyday their are more happy accidents. They’re not all tidy or comfortable. Sometimes there friction and frustration. Sometime fission in place of fusion. But we’re in a flow state that, like an undertow and a strong surface current, are pulling us forward. Where? Too soon to say. But creative collisions and happy accidents suggest we’re trending in the right direction!
Boathouse Bonfire, September 27, 2014 (Source: Geo Davis)
If September poems sound overly sentimental to you or if you’re inclined to a grittier observance of the almost-upon-us Autumn Equinox, I’ve got you covered. Soon. Stay tuned.
But if you’re comfortable lingering briefly — and these poems are, if nothing else, brief — in the seasonality and liminality of the present moment, then I’d like to offer you a few September poems. After all, sometimes the singing underneath doesn’t translate to images or longform exposition. So I’ve bundled a tidy bundle of verse celebrating my one of my four favorite seasons.
Susan in Carriage Barn, September 12, 2006 (Source: Geo Davis)
Haiku September Poems
Short and sweet, sometimes bittersweet, is the name of the game when trying to put your finger on something as poignant and humbling as the shift from summer to autumn (with the omnipresent reminder that autumn too will soon yield, and winter will shroud the colors and flavors and aromas away beneath a snowy blanket). But that can be an elusive errand.
There’s something ineffable about Septembering, but anyone who’s dwelled a spell in the North Country is familiar with this shift. (Source: Seasonality: Septembering)
Haiku’s economy offers a bold if foolhardy effort, so let’s start there.
•:•
Dusky zinnias,
harvest-ready to welcome
arriving houseguests.
— Geo Davis
•:•
Bountiful beans,
red-podded asparagus,
climbing the teepee.
— Geo Davis
•:•
Seasonal surreal:
autumnal art, alchemy,
tart transformation.
— Geo Davis
Sunset, September 6, 2015 (Source: Geo Davis)
Longer September Poem
I’m struck by the concurrently lavish spoils and humbling caution of September. In so many respects the bounty of an entire summer’s worth of gardening and orcharding comes due in September. Sure, we’ve been enjoying the gardens since May, but the this month full of contrasts is without doubt the most abundant harvest. And yet, even as we indulge to excess, the crisp nights and the sunlight’s increasingly anemic illumination remind us to prepare for winter.
When Septembering
honor abundance
as autumn will soon
yield to the drum roll
of hale and hoarfrost,
bitter wind, and snow.
— Geo Davis
This might be the first verse to a longer look at the point-counterpoint of this intoxicating yet sobering marvel of a month. It might also have reached its end. A little hibernation should help decide.
Cider Pressing, September 6, 2015 (Source: Geo Davis)
Sing-song Along
I’ve made no secret of the fact that this 2022 summer and autumn have been pivotal for Susan and for me. We’re surfing some seismic transformations in our lives, finally confronting inevitabilities and incongruities that have been evolving for a long time, and fortifying one another for significant choices and changes ahead. In all probability the liminal space we’re navigating underlies the vibrance and drama I’m noticing in everyday events. But I’m unable to disregard the rhymes, rituals, harmonies, and auspicious signs (cairns, buoys, vade mecums,…) as I immerse myself in the texture and artifacts of a decade and a half with Rosslyn, as Susan and I revise and remap and re-plot our next chapters.
So many friends and acquaintances have contributed to this new adventure we’re embarking on, often without even realizing it or intending to effect our trajectory. Influences have an uncanny habit of popping up at just the right time! And so I close this post with an invitation to you. We welcome you to join and participate in our quest. As fellow sojourners we’ll better bridge the valleys and better celebrate the lofty summits ahead. Grateful to be traveling together!
Let’s rewind back to my discovery of this early 20th century song.
Care to join me for a singalong? Today I’d like to share with you the sheet music cover image for the song, “On Lake Champlain” by Alfred Bryan and Albert Gumble.
[…]
So for now I’ll pause this post in the hope that the vintage color lithograph for Alfred Bryan and Albert Gumble’s sheet music will miraculously move us closer to an audible version of “On Lake Champlain”. If fortune smiles upon us, I’ll update this post. (Source: “On Lake Champlain” Song by Alfred Bryan and Albert Gumble)
I have some good news for you. Today I’m ready to pass along the original sheet music, several early recordings (pops, scratches, and all), and a stripped down midi recording if you’d like to rig up your own karaoke.
Columbia Record’s “On Lake Champlain” by Sterling Trio (Alfred Bryan and Albert Gumble)
Sterling Trio & Mills Brothers
Without further ado, I invite you to hear the song as it was originally recorded. Enjoy.
If you experiment with pitch and tempo, you might modernize this ditty by a few decades, possibly rendering it a little catchier in the process.
Silvertone’s “On Lake Champlain” by Sterling Trio (Alfred Bryan and Albert Gumble)
MIDI Sans Vocals
The time distorted sound of an old 78 speed LP is evocative and slightly romantic, but what if you’re ready for a “On Lake Champlain” singalong? More good news! You can download Geoff Grainger‘s midi recording of “On Lake Champlain” (part of his online repository and resource called Ditty Box Enterprise) for hours of fireside enjoyment. Of course, you might need to play around with the raw file to make replay convenient. I just slurped it into Garage Band and then output it as an MP3. Good luck.
“On Lake Champlain” by Alfred Bryan and Albert Gumble (song sheet, p.3)
“On Lake Champlain” by Alfred Bryan and Albert Gumble (song sheet, p.4)
“On Lake Champlain” by Alfred Bryan and Albert Gumble (song sheet, p.5)
“On Lake Champlain” Sheet Music
Now if you’re feeling ready to invite the neighbors over and spark off the bonfire, I encourage you to first download the sheet music from Duke University’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library so that everyone can join in the revelry. After all what fun is an “On Lake Champlain” singalong if you’re solo-ing through two verses while everyone else roasts marshmallows?
And, once you’re good and comfortable with your new-old song, how about recording it and sending it my way?! Thanks in advance.
Undocking 2022: ready to remove the docks (Source: Geo Davis)
Once upon a time undocking referred to a boat pulling away from a dock, a ship disembarking from a pier. At Rosslyn we also use the term to describe the annual autumn removal of docks (and boat lift) from Lake Champlain once the boats have been hauled and we begin to prepare for the North Country wintry. There’s also a more modern conotation in recent decades that summons grainy video footage of a spaceship uncoupling from the space station, or in a more quotidian context disconnecting technological devices or applications. For me today, in this post, undocking is all of these and more, a sort of metaphorical undocking, uncoupling, disconnecting as well.
Undocking 2022: docks removed (Source: Geo Davis)
Undocking v1.0
Let’s start with those first two photos above. Before and after autumn dock removal. In the first, an early morning photo, I sent the drone up for an end-of-season portrait of Rosslyn’s waterfront. A moody moment as if the lake and sky and the forces of nature were brooding, perhaps wavering, second guessing this seasonal transition. Less than a couple of hours later the boatlift sits high and dry (just barely visible north of the cottonwoods and west the multi stem maple) and the docks are lined up on the beach, their temporary home until late fall / early winter when they’ll be moved up onto the grassy terrace.
Undocking 2022: ready to remove the docks (Source: Geo Davis)
This third image, an aerial view directly above the boathouse, dock, and boatlift, offers a better perspective of the waterfront before undocking. And the photograph below offers virtually the same view except that the docks and boatlift have been stored on shore.
Undocking 2022: docks removed (Source: Geo Davis)
Of course, before proceeding with dock and boatlift removal, there’s an important prologue, disembarking in the Nautique ski/surf boat and the Chris Craft picnic boat for the final time of the season. So last Friday we hauled both boats for the winter, and today we removed the boatlift and the docks. Undocking complete, we’re —metaphorically speaking, at least — one step closer to our big seasonal transit. We’re temporarily unmoored. Unvesselled.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CiCnGSnAgab/
Undocking v2.0
In the spring of 2021 I sold a 31’ sloop that I’d sailed around Lake Champlain for seven seasons. In retrospect, I suppose it was one of my pandemic pivots. Although I’d been considering selling it sooner rather than later, I had expected to hold onto the sailboat for at least another year or two. I was contemplating a move to a larger boat, and I was beginning to wonder aloud with Susan if it might be time to start thinking about coastal sailing, a step toward blue water sailing that has long beckoned me. I’ve explored my rather sudden decision to sell Errant elsewhere, so I’ll curtail that narrative here. But I’ve brought it up for two reasons.
For starters, selling Errant was part and parcel of an ongoing period of transition with roots well before — but catalyzed during — the pandemic. But there’s something more germane to the present context.
Usually when I headed out to sail it was for a span of hours. Maybe half a day. If lucky, maybe a day. But sometimes, when opportunity allowed, I would depart for days instead of hours. On occasion Susan would join me. More often I sailed solo. And whether heading out for a few hours of wind chasing or setting off on a multi day sailing adventure, I would experience a euphoric wave as I hoisted the sails. An exhilarating wave simultaneously deep in my gut, high in my heart, and even higher in my head would sweep over me. A sort of high that would fill me with enthusiasm and hope and a profound feeling of freedom.
Helming 6-tons of home, vessel, food, and plans into a stiff chop and a swift blow is one of my “happy places”, as the saying goes. A plan and an itinerary but also a comfortable awareness that circumstances and conditions could shift unexpectedly, that sailing by definition presupposes a state of fluidity and flux from undocking (or untethering) to setting anchor or returning to harbor.
To some degree this euphoric state is present every time I set out in any boat, any journey, any transition. Our seasonal migration between the lush shores of Lake Champlain and the high desert southwest is one of these undocking rituals. A setting out. An ending. A beginning. Closure. A fresh start. A new adventure. Another chapter. Seasonality writ large…
But I’m digressing and meandering. Back to the present, to removing the boats and storing them for the winter, to removing the docks and storing them for the winter, to winterizing the waterfront for the coming cold, the snow, the ice…
The present undocking is even more significant for us than usual. Or at least I have the sense that it is more significant. As we navigate a period of curated liminality, I am especially conscious of the uncoupling. The untethering. Sometimes a simple, familiar seasonal ritual — falling out of summer and into autumn, undocking vessels and the temporary means by which we secure them — turns out to be an integral constituent part of a larger, more profound transformation.
This is what I see when I look at the aerial photographs above. It is an awareness, a conscious yielding to the change(s) underway. I’m confident that Susan and I are both attuned to this liminality, that we’re aware and willing to embrace the shift, to immerse ourselves fully into what is feeling like a monumental shift in the proverbial seasons. I believe that we’re in the flow in a way that has eluded us in recent years. In many years really. This present undocking and its various rhizomic permutations feels more significant than its predecessors. In fact, this undocking is increasingly reminiscent of our transition from Manhattan to Essex 16 years ago. It’s still early. And it’s still unclear what exactly were moving through, moving toward. But we are journeying toward greater clarity each day.
Griffin Considers Winter Solstice: December 22, 2013 (Photo: Geo Davis)
Welcome to day one of the Adirondack Coast‘s coldest season. Today is the winter solstice, the first official day of winter, and — more importantly for the likes of my mother and others who favor longer days and shorter nights — the threshold between the briefest day and the most prolonged night and imperceptibly-but-steadily lengthening daylight. If you live in the North Country it seems peculiar that winter should only have just begun given several weeks of wintery weather. Seasonality, in these parts, might suggest a slightly earlier autumn-to-winter transition, closer to Thanksgiving than to Christmas.
But the choice is ours to remark and not to make, so we soberly observe this hibernal milestone with tempered optimism that sunnier days await us on the other side. And, for the astronomically exuberant, it’s time to celebrate. Cheers!
If you’re longing for more sunlight, Wednesday is a day to celebrate: Dec. 21 is the winter solstice, the shortest day and longest night of the year — and first day of astronomical winter — in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s a sign that longer, brighter days are upon us. (Source: Justin Grieser, “First day of winter: Shortest day, longest night on December 21 solstice“, The Washington Post, December 21, 2022)
But, as with most tidy transitions, this threshold isn’t actually so tidy. Winter solstice may mark the shortest day and the longest night of the year, but the sunrise and sunset equation is slightly more muddled.
The bottom line: mornings will get a bit darker until early January, but we’ve already gained a few minutes of evening light. On balance, daylight will start to increase after Dec. 21, even as winter’s coldest days still lie ahead. (Source: Justin Grieser, “First day of winter: Shortest day, longest night on December 21 solstice“, The Washington Post, December 21, 2022)
So let’s focus on the lengthening days. And, if those increasingly cold days ahead bring snow, then let’s focus on that as well. After all, winter — proper, snowy winter — is one of our four favorite seasons of the year at Rosslyn! It’s a time for dog adventures, cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, alpine and telemark skiing, bird feeders flush with avian wildlife, and that unique flavor or crystal clarity that only a subzero morning can catalyze.
Winter Solstice & Onward: December 21, 2022 (Image: Dark Sky)
And speaking of colder days ahead, this screenshot from Dark Sky appears to corroborate the generalization, albeit with a curious exception on Friday. Winter is here, and it looks probably that we’ll be able to enjoy a white Christmas (unless Friday’s warm weather melts the existing snow and delivers rain instead.)
In closing, note that the handsome Labrador retriever atop this post is not Carley, our current dog, but Griffin, a prior pal-o-mine. We lost him just over two years ago, and the ache hasn’t subsided. Maybe with longer, colder days ahead…
Have you ever heard of Camp Cherokee for Boys in Willsboro? If so, I’d love to learn more. So far the details are pretty thin…
Campfire, Camp Cherokee for Boys, Willsboro, NY (postcard, front)
As we roll into the final days of 2022, I’ve been attempting to streamline my end-of-year projects. And while the prospect of simply deleting lingering items on the perennial punch list is tempting, I’m instead shuffling priorities against the incoming year’s timeline. Yes, some oldies have sat long enough that they’ve moldered into irrelevance. Delete! Others, like today’s artifact (an antique postcard for an extinct summer camp), were probably somewhat superfluous since day one (this draftling — an especially brief stub awaiting development — originated on May 18, 2017!), but they continue to intrigue me. Not ready to delete yet. And so I bring to you an unabashedly abbreviated post showcasing a postcard from Camp Cherokee for Boys. Once upon a time this small summer camp existed on Willsboro Point, possibly not too far from Camp-of-the-Pines. Today neither lakeside retreat endures, but I’m hoping that sharing this vintage postcard just might gin up a little more information.
Crowdsource Kindling
With an eye to kindling this fledgling crowdsource initiative into existence, I’ll share what little I’ve been able to ascertain thus far.
According the A Handbook of Summer Camps: An Annual Survey, Volume 3 which was published in 1926 by Porter Sargent, Camp Cherokee for Boys was located “at Willsborough Point” which may simply mean somewhere on Willsboro Point, but also might suggest that it was actually located a the tip of the peninsula?
This introductory blurb vaguely locates three summer camps located within the vicinity.
Willsborough is north of Essex. Camp Pok-O-Moonshine is on Long Pond near the foot of Peak Pok-O-Moonshine. Camp Pocahontas is on the shore of Lake Champlain, two miles east of the village. At Willsborough Point is Camp Cherokee. (p. 388, A Handbook of Summer Camps: An Annual Survey, Volume 3)
Scrolling down a little further to the bottom of page 388 and the top of 389 we can read the following blurb about Camp Cherokee for Boys.
Here’s a more legible swipe at the blurry image above.
CAMP CHEROKEE, P. O. Willsborough, N. Y. Alt 110 ft. Harold K. Van Buren, 508 National Bldg., Cleveland, Ohio. For boys 8-14 Enr. 30 Staff 10 Est. Fee $300.
Cherokee limits its enrollment to thirty boys. Mr. Van Buren is director of Educational Research, National School Club, Cleveland, Ohio, and with him is associated the Rev. Henry S. Whitehead. Ph.D., an Episcopal clergyman who is also a short story writer. Although the camp is conducted under Episcopal auspices, the enrollment is not limited to boys of that faith. A varied program of athletics, aquatics, woodcraft and dramatics is provided. Much attention is paid to trips to the well known Adirondack peaks, as well as a sight seeing trip to Montreal. Tutoring may also be provided without extra charge. (p. 388-9, A Handbook of Summer Camps: An Annual Survey, Volume 3)
The affiliation between Van Buren and the Cleveland based educational research institution is curiosity inspiring. Hoping to learn a bit more about that, and, of course, about the Messieurs Van Buren and Whitehead. The latter appears in a 1926 publication from the Alumni Council of Columbia University, although the relevant clipping is too small and to be readily legible.
If your eyes are as strained as mine by attempting to decipher that blurry blob of timeworn text, here’s a more legible transcription.
Whitehead spends his summers at Lake Champlain. There he is associated with Mr. H. K. Van Buren who is director and proprietor of Camp Cherokee for Boys at Willsboro and together they have worked out constructive new theories on boys’ camps with satisfactory results. (p. 398, Columbia Alumni News, Alumni Council of Columbia University, 1926)
There’s a bit of curiosity bait in there as well. For example, why would two contemporaneous publications refer to the same town but spell the name differently. One is tempted to assume that the older spelling, Willsborough, was at some point replaced by the newer spelling, Willsboro. Perhaps this was the period of transition? I wonder. And then there’s the rather clinical reference to the two men developing “constructive new theories on boys’ camps with satisfactory results.” I suppose that better-than-satisfactory results might have better assured the longevity of this no longer extant summer camp. Of course, administering an enterprise of this sort with fewer than three dozen clients seems like another ill conceived component. It would be challenging to mathematically ensure viability for this business model for long. But maybe this too is a question of age/time and transition. It’s clear that once upon a time small camps and schools managed to thrive with far smaller populations than they do today. At least for a while…
In closing, I’m soliciting any/all knowledge of the former Willsboro Point summer camp known as Camp Cherokee for Boys. Thanks in advance!
Campfire, Camp Cherokee for Boys, Willsboro, NY (postcard, back)
Teeter-Tottering: Should I stay or should I go? (Source: Geo Davis)
To borrow a turn of phrase from Shaye Elliott, “I’m teeter tottering between” being fully present in Essex and departing for Santa Fe, betwixt summer’s curtain call and autumn’s debut, between and betwixt scores of less-than-precisely delineated transitions.
Should I stay or should I go now? — The Clash
Fair warning: I’m mixing metaphors today. Like fusion cooking and creative cocktail concocting, I’m hoping that purists will forgive my transgression(s) and sample the experiment with an open mind.
I’ve already shared a couple of quick riffs on the push-and-pull of seasonality, wrapping up the re-decking project, re-starting the boathouse gangway project, launching the exciting new icehouse project, and recovering from August 30 storm damage. I need to flesh out all of those transitions in fuller detail soon, but today instead I’ll touch on our autumn changeover from the Adirondack Coast to the high desert southwest with an unanticipated delay for COVID and a perhaps peculiarly drawn out rumination on teeter-tottering. Fair warning!
Teeter-Tottering: Should I stay or should I go? (Source: Geo Davis)
Teasing Out Teeter-Tottering Metaphor
I’m struck, I might add, by the strength of this teeter-tottering metaphor. The teeter-totter, a seesaw, with someone sitting on the other end, riding the teeter-totter seat down to the ground, close enough to toe-touch. When fortunate, bringing the soles of both feet to rest on the ground and bending knees to squat and push off, sending teeter-totter up into the air as a friend on the other end returns to the earth.
I recollect that there’s another challenge (and distinct pleasure) to teeter-tottering as well. Sure, it’s exciting to tip one another up and down, but balancing is also appealing, both friends suspended in mid air, neither touching the ground, neither rising, neither falling. Equilibrium. Balance. A quivering stasis that requires focus and collaboration between both friends.
Obviously the principal thrill of balancing on a teeter totter is that it’s incredibly difficult. And just as obvious is the indisputable fact that teeter-totter equilibrium is it best temporary. Eventually one or the other person will come back down to the earth, planting their feet on the ground, while the other will lift skyward. It’s impossible to postpone indefinitely.
So if it’s obvious, why am I explaining it this way? I think that the allure of the teeter-tottering metaphor — at least for me, right now — is that it so perfectly conjoins otherwise dissimilar sentiments.
I’m thrilled, exhilarated, and yet anxious about the abundance of thresholds upon which we are currently balancing. Certainly there’s a very real exuberance in the moments where we shed some gravity and float high. There are butterflies in the belly (and whirlwinds of worry in the belfry) when lofty ambitions come plunging down. But like that teeter-tottering youth of my memory, I often find that we’re endeavoring to maintain some fragile equilibrium, knowing full well that we can’t maintain it forever, and yet hoping to stabilize the teeter-totter for a moment, just another moment,… Or maybe a day? A week? This is not to say that we’re in denial about the inevitability of some pretty major transitions, but it speaks honestly about our hesitance in at least some cases.
You’ve possibly noticed a parade of posts recently addressing the transitions and transformations that we’re navigating. I apologize for too often talking obliquely, speaking around the issue rather than addressing it directly. Sometimes that’s part of the process, I’m afraid. Sometimes the prologue serves the needs of the storyteller even more than the reader.
In short, please bear with me. I recognize that not everybody enjoys teeter-tottering, so thank you for your patience, and in many cases, thank you for your generosity and advice and coaching.
Know then that this curiously kaleidoscopic time and space we’re teeter-tottering through (I warned you about mixing my metaphors!) will yield to more candid sharing when the time is right, with updates aplenty including:
The exceedingly handsome garapa deck rebuild that was completed a few weeks ago.
The boathouse gangway rebuild v2.0 which we’ll be relaunching soon (or at least as soon as the new team can demo the dangerously misguided fiasco left behind when TFG finally admitted defeat and quit.)
With those considerably more interesting transformations in the offing soon, I’ll conclude this post with a slightly more personal teeter-tottering anecdote.
Susan and I had prepared to depart Essex for Santa Fe considerably earlier this year than we habitually do. We’d invited some friends together for a last hurrah, and Susan had prepared impeccably as she does to enjoy a comfortable journey cross-country with our dog. And, given that our friend, Hroth Ottosen, would be mirroring our north-by-southwest migration as he returns from Santa Fe to Essex to take up residence at Rosslyn while we’re away (more on this including an introduction soon) our early departure was intended to allow comfortable breathing room between our departure and his arrival. But, as they say, the best laid plans…
After exercising caution and safely eluding Covid for 2-1/2 years, Susan fell ill about a week prior to our departure. And within just under a week I followed suit. Although my recovery was fortunately quick, hers was not. In fact we were both startled with how much more pronounced her symptoms and how much longer the duration of her illness. If Covid affectively debilitated me for two days, it knocked her out for more than two weeks.
Needless to say, our pre-departure fête and our travel plans were scuttled. Throw in Labor Day travel challenges, and we ended up postponing our departure even further. Perhaps this was the universe’s way of reminding us not to become overconfident in our planning, not to assume that we can orchestrate our way out of unpredictability, setbacks, and topsy-turvy crisis management that these times of transition typically engender. All this to say, the teeter totter tumbled!
Hankering for a hammock huddle this morning, so I’ll I revisit the photograph I shared on June 6 depicting a herd of hammocks near the orchard. Yes, the color is a little over juiced. And the shadows are dark almost to the point of feeling ominous. Or cozy? But this moment beckons this morning given yesterday’s storm damage. (I’ve included another image below capturing just how close one of the fallen trees came to both the icehouse and the hammock huddle.
Hammock Huddle Haiku
Together apart,
plein air cocoons canopied
beneath maple trees.
— Geo Davis
Pandemic Precursor
While quarantining during the early months of the pandemic Susan and I spent time exploring and experimenting with aspects of our property that we’d never considered before. Or not recently, at least.
Sixteen years have lulled us into habits, ways of living and looking at Rosslyn that have possibly become more confining than we’d realized prior to weeks-on-end of quarantine.
We spent many afternoons and early evenings on the lawn of the abandoned clay tennis court (located west, northwest of the icehouse). It started because the early spring sunsets were best visible from here, but it continued because we discovered a fresh and inviting space and perspective that we’d previously overlooked. And this new vantage, this new ritual catalyzed a shift in our thinking. Wondering, really. We’d inadvertently stumbled upon a liminal space. And the longer we spent hammocking together near the glowing Solo stove fire pit gifted to us by our older nephew, bundling up as the evening grew chill, witnessing another pandemic sunset, the more our conversations and questions raced into exciting new places. Our wondering wandered further and further into liminality.
Transitions. Flux. Liminality. Interstices. Inflection. Evolving… We are awash in transitions! (Source: Transitions)
Three years later we’re navigating a tempest of transformation. But I’m tickling a tangent, so best to stick with our hammock huddle for now.
Ensemble Hammocking
Our earliest ensemble hammocking in this location, back in March or April 2020, was nestled up together in this wooden arc stand.
Pandemic Hammocking 2020 (Source: Geo Davis)
Needless to say, no side-by-side reveal since we were quarantined, and we weren’t super swift with selfies…
We’ve long loved hammocks, stringing them up throughout our property, so it occured to me that it would be fun to create a group of hammocks hanging together in the hopes that soon we’d be able to be joined by friends once again. Recumbent social distancing!
The hammock huddle shown at the top of this post was born. The same is shown here, minus the giant maple tree that used to tower nearby.
Hammock Huddle (Source: Geo Davis)
As it turns out, the hammock roundup has been a hit. For the third season in a row we’ve enjoyed group hammocking among the still adolescent stand of maple trees growing between the tennis court and the orchard.
Yesterday‘s storm damage was distributed throughout our property, and the immense maple that succumbed in the photo stood right next to the hammock huddle. Guided through the forceful blow by some benevolent force, the towering tree exploded onto the ground without damaging the hammocks, the maple trees in which they are suspended, or for that matter any of the adjoining trees save a few branches here and there. It’s remarkable really. Even the gate through which we drive the tractor was unscathed. And, as I pointed out yesterday, if the wind been blowing in the opposite direction, the maple would likely have destroyed the icehouse that we are just beginning to rehabilitate. Instead, we have a new aperture of visible sky this morning and a year’s worth of firewood.
