Category: Wanderlust to Houselust
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What’s In A Name?
Write about your first name: its meaning, significance, etymology, etc. Rosslyn’s *possibly* Scottish Gaelic etymology *possibly* refers to being located on a waterway and/or *possibly* refers to being located on a promontory. There are other possibilities as well. Old German. Latin. A rose by any other name… Word-wonder wandering is seductive but in the case…
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Dream Job
What’s your dream job? Saturday, a day for job dreaming, right? Or telemark skiing… That’s how I spent my day. But now it’s time to wax wordy about my dream job. Jobs? Hybrid job? A dream job spanning diverse occupations, vertically dissimilar vocations. Let’s start with a few of the more obvious ingredients for my…
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Canine Companions
What is your favorite animal? So many animals to favor, and yet it is the wholeness, the interconnectedness, of *all* animals that I favor most. So, instead, I’ll respond to this prompt as a sort of playful panegyric to our canine companions, past, present, and future. For while I do not favor dogs above all…
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Untethering Revisited
A little over a year ago, on October 26, 2022, I penned a post, “Leaping & Untethering“, attempting to grapple substantively with beginning to imagine our lives post Rosslyn. One of many posts over the last year and a half that approach this touchy topic, the words I wrote were cautious. I included the word…
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Poetics of Essex
At least part of what I was longing for after living, working, and exploring in Western Europe from 1999 to 2003 was a “connection with place“. To be honest, I’d fallen hard for Paris and Rome, and after four years based primarily in the former, untethering was bittersweet. But something was missing. I had begun…
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Champlaining & ADK Surfing
Sometimes in September, we’re still wakesurfing. Once upon a time we actually continued watersports right until the end of October, breaking ice off of the boat cover, cocooning ourselves in layers of fleece, mittens, and hats… But that hasn’t happened for a few years. So today’s ADK surfing superhero snapshot is, in fact, an illusion…
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More to Say
Conversation and companionship with a home? More to say…
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Time to Harden Off Veggie Plants
Gardening is a bit of a balancing act. And a gambling act! So many variables: spring climate conditions, high tunnel preparation, readiness of transplants,… And the exuberance of gardening after months of winter. And so, year after year, we arrive at this point. Is it time to harden off veggie plants? A few weeks back,…
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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…
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Bygone Barns
Swapping December for January signals that we’re four months into Rosslyn’s icehouse rehabilitation which, in turn, means that I’m four months overdue for a look at (or perhaps the first of several looks at) my love of barns. Truth be told, I’m a bit of a barnophile. And, given my weakness for wabi-sabi, I’m especially…
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This is Not a Metaphor
In the vintage postcard above — faded, blurred, and stained with touch and time — the historic lighthouse located at Split Rock in Essex, NY reigns over a promontory bearing a curious resemblance to an arboretum, more landscaped and less wild than today. A copse of diverse specimen trees here, a granite outcrop there, a…
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What Makes a House a Home?
At the root of Rosslyn Redux is a question. What makes a house a home? Simple question. Less simple answer. More precisely, the answers to what makes a house a home are diverse and possibly even evolving — slowly, perpetually — as we live our lives. What defines “homeness” as a child likely differs as…