This is Why I Love It

This is the spillway in August.  The big dam is upstream (right) at the Town Reservoir (now unused and part of the State Forest).  There was a mill on the property; the stonework indicates that it was just outside the photo on the left.  I had to “re-register” this spillway with the DEP and swear that I would maintain it.  Since it is not a dam, it will not be a problem, but I have spent a good 2 weeks with Randy chainsawing and removing the logs that have clogged it since 1989.  You can see some of them in the photo.  They’re gone now.

 I’m not from around here.  I live In one of those old New England towns that remind me of some of the places outside the country I’ve also lived in, where you could stay for 40 years, raise your kids there, and be elected to office, and still be considered a “newcomer.”  So I embrace my rookie status here, and let the lifelong residents guide me through the town and its history.  I belong to the Conservation Commission and we try to keep up as best we can with the monitoring, or at least visiting, of all the open space in town.  And there’s lots of it.  Too much, some would say.  WE say: not enough.  And I was with the Chair and another member, both pals of mine, on the north end of town where I never go, because nothing but nothing is up there except woods and fields and The Family, whose weblike clan encompasses over 5,000 contiguous acres up there, and more to the south and in other towns, but we were coming back from Blue Flag Meadow down the old highway out of town that crosses the Air Line Trail, and there was a teeny sign in the poison ivy and weeds on the side of the road and JO said “Oh my gosh, Barney’s cabin is for sale,” and Randy stopped the car and I still couldn’t see it.  I am sorry I did not take a photo then because it was like looking at an enormous bug in a cocoon, the vines and moss covering everything—and so tiny there was not much to cover—and 20 huge but spindly oaks and white pine leaning in towards the building as if to shield or smother it, and by now it was the latter.  But I could see an outline—a dear little mossy roof, a fairytale stone fireplace . . . and the most lovely feeling of good will and sweetness just floating over everything, but mixed in with a bit of sadness, a small, choked cry of “help!” as the little cabin was dragged into oblivion by ivy and rot and desolation.

Jo and Randy knew Barney, and both remembered driving down this road as teenagers and seeing Barney at the cabin.  Nobody remembered Barney actually building the cabin—which he did around 1950, using spare lumber and materials that friends had given him –but everyone remembered seeing him down at the stream fishing, or hanging out in the cabin having a beer with this or that buddy.  Barney died in 1989.  What I know about him I’ve learned from his dear daughter June, who still lives in town; she’s sad and sweet and misses her mom and dad—and also her husband who died about 5 years ago—too young and from what I have never asked.  But he’s buried right up the street from where I live now, in a cemetery shared only by dear Vic, the man who sold me this house and died in 2006, and a champion golden retriever who was the cemetery’s first guest.

Barney’s wife Bea did not use the cabin—I have a feeling she thought it was wrong, somehow, to do so without him.  So it’s sat vacant for 23 years, occasionally lent to Boy Scouts for overnights and also occasionally squatted in by partygoers looking for a roof and a—what?  player piano?  Most of the windows were broken, but other than that, and the subsequent thieving of the generator and, right before I took possession, the iron bathtub (bastids!), people did little damage.  It was the elements that got to the poor thing, starting with the hole in the roof caused by Barney’s building the stone chimney face right on top of it and not facing it, so that water poured down onto the floor and did quite a number on the northwest corner. 

That day that we first stopped, I walked around the cabin and fell in love.  Randy and Jo were amused but not surprised—everyone loved Barney and his cabin.  But no one really had a use for it.  It sat on 2.5 acres but was non-conforming, teensy, and of dubious ability to get a septic system (although June said that for her, the outhouse was always fine.  Unfortunately, it’s long gone and I will have to get another, at least to be used temporarily—peeing all over the property is getting old.)

 At the time (and, well, now) I lived on the other end of town in another small house—but palatial compared to this one—and was having a feud with my adjacent neighbors that had begun while I was in Afghanistan and had continued upon my return a year later to the point where the toxicity of their proximity was too much for me.  I figured if I could just have a tiny place in town, with no mortgage, that I could lock up easy and leave when I worked out of the country, and come back to easily, my life would be more manageable.  And if I could not sell my house right away (which has come to pass—although my schoolhouse-for-sale blog has become corrupt and won’t show archived files—oy!) at least I could use the little cabin as an office, which the kind ZEO told me I could do.

Afghanistan did many things to me: it made me afraid of flatbed trucks and oncoming bicycles; it allowed me to develop the ability to identify, by sound, 5 types of military helicopter, and it gave me enough money to justify taking a chance on buying a piece of property that ostensibly no one had wanted since 2004 when June first tried to sell it to pay for Bea’s care, since Mrs Barney was not doing well even then, and died in 2010.

Even if it could never become a residence, I loved it and wanted to save it.  I had no idea what I was doing or getting myself into.  I still don’t.  But I have the kindness of these town denizens, the uncanny and unexpected engineering abilities of several scruffy New England types, a disbelieving cheering squad, and the endless parade of curious hikers, mountain bikers, travelers of this lonely stretch of back road, horse-riders, and members of The Family, all to encourage me.  This, plus the near-magical beauty of this spot, is why I love it.  All I have to do is stay within budget (ahahahahahaha) and soldier on.

In July, the lobelia (cardinal flower) line the opposite bank of the stream (and most of this side, too, where the photo was taken) in the most prolific display I’ve ever seen. (this photo is a little washed out I am sorry to say.)  You can see them from up above the stone culvert as you walk or ride along the trail; people just stop and stare, it is so amazing.

 Last month I was clearing around the left side by the water and saw a 10-inch green crayfish!  I am from the coast, and I did not know that there were such things as “fresh water lobsters.” My friend Dan the soil scientist set me straight. [Note the water lilies, bane of my existence, along with the water hyacinth.  Watch for my "Discreet But Mssive Reduction of Nusiance Pond Plants" entries.]