Tag: Heritage
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Sacred Exchanges
I awoke this morning thinking about Danusha Laméris’s poem, “Small Kindnesses”, and Rosslyn. Two discrete points of reference mingling, as if in conversation. Two planets passing, briefly eclipsing, a gravitational closeness, a tender but fleeting affinity, an ephemeral communion. The echo of a question in Laméris’s lines lingers. Like a hint, a glimmer of affirmation.…
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Great, Greater, Greatest Gifts
Plunging into another Bloganuary prompt and once again obliged to qualify my response. This time the question is sufficiently open ended to invoke a great variety of answers. Hurrah! But I’m going to bend the inquiry toward Rosslyn for better relevance. With that prologue, on to great, greater, and greatest gifts. Here’s the Bloganuary prompt.…
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Spirited Country Life
We make no attempt to conceal our spirited country life at Rosslyn. This exuberant existence — working, playing, rehabilitating, exercising, creating, gardening, and celebrating the abundance of Essex, Lake Champlain, and the Adirondack Coast — is a daily affirmation of life. Robust, often intentional, and sometimes serendipitous living. But what about the less vibrant, ghostlier…
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Willsboro Paper Mill, circa 1900 and 1920
We return today to Willsboro’s industrial Boquet River shoreline a century and more ago. This follow-up to “Willsboro Mills Circa 1912: Grist Mill, Saw Mill, and Paper Mill” includes three intriguing glimpses of this once thriving site of which only a hint remains today. The aerial photograph on this vintage postcard above offers a birds-eye…
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Horse Ferry
I’ve just returned to Essex via ferry from Charlotte, Vermont. This waterway commute is an integral component of our life in Essex, New York. 30 minutes from ferry dock to ferry dock. Sometimes a little less. Sometimes a little more. No longer a sail ferry or horse ferry, but in some ways virtually unchanged across…
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Adirondack Guideboat or Vermont Dory?
“Today,” as the cool kids say, “I did a thing.” I’ve been lusting after an Adirondack Guideboat, well, probably since the late 1970’s when I enjoyed my first rowed ride in this quintessentially ADK conveyance at the Ausable Club. During the early days of the pandemic my mind returned this timeless watercraft, as elegant today…
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Iconic Adirondack Chair
So many sweet moments as I re-enter our Adirondack Coast orbit, and this one is less verbal than visual rumination. I’m thinking of the iconic Adirondack chair that appears all around the world. And all around the world is not an exaggeration. In fact, the iconic Adirondack chairs in this post were photographed by me…
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Re-roofing and Flood Proofing
Last summer (June-July 2010) our biggest concern with Rosslyn’s boathouse was restoring the roof. It’s hard to imagine that a year later our biggest concern is saving the building, pier and waterfront from finally-receding-but-increasingly-rough Lake Champlain flood waters! What better way to distract our anxieties than to look back on drier times? The cedar…