A March cold snap has postponed our maple syrup season momentarily so my thoughts run in a different direction today. Yesterday I wrote of the freedoms of having a blog site to basically write whatever subject matter seems pertinent at any given moment. While my blog is heavily nature themed most of the time there are other topics that invite pragmatic muses. A while back I wrote a post titled It’s About Time. I mentioned Hill House where we have lived for close to 6 years now. I have been wanting to sell it for almost 2 years but despite two different realtors efforts nothing happened. Just a couple totally ridiculous offers that I refused. On social media recently I have hinted around about being busy and making apologies for being a bit behind with my blogging. What most people don’t know is that we have been packing and moving our belongings out!We are selling Hill House and will be spending our last night here very soon. The story of how we came to be here in the first place really doesn’t need to be told. Let’s simply say that it was part of my “old life”. 2017 would be one of the most challenging years of my life. I was faced with many tough decisions. I tackled them one day at a time. I threw myself into my two large work projects and decided that they would be my last. I retired that November. It was one of the best decisions that I have ever made! The way forward wasn’t always clear but time passed. I put my son Zane’s happiness and needs at the forefront of all my plans. We bonded greatly through those days of massive change. He kept me focused and on track. I found more time for writing and nature once again. We continued living at Hill House despite the fact that it was way too large for us. I wasn’t ready to uproot Zane. I felt that he needed that sense of home and stability. We ditched Hill House in the summer of 2018 and moved to our cottage on Black Lake for a few months. We lived a carefree existence of camping and hiking in the Adirondack Mountains a few days each month. Adventure became our theme. Hill House was still home base but I think the lesson that I was presenting to Zane was beginning to take hold. We could feel at home wherever we found ourselves. In a wind swept tent on an Adirondack camp site buffeted by rain and struggling to keep dry. Emerging in the morning and laughing about our harrowing night! Or in a sketchy motel room with no locks where we barricaded the door with furniture. In the old cottage at Black Lake where we shared evenings paddling and hunting beaver sticks. Barbecuing and sharing dinner with family right next door. It was proof of the old adage “home is where the heart is”. Back at Hill House in the fall of 2018 big chances were about to come. Jennifer would enter my life in October of 2018. She’d bring joy and new meaning to our time spent at Hill House.Meals shared together and a most special memory of the Xmas we decorated a freshly cut tree together. Time spent safely tucked within its warm,safe haven as winter blanketed the north country. Home yet sometimes falling under the shadow of the old life. We’d feel moments of home in the tiny unfinished interior of our farm cabin during maple syrup season in the spring of 2019. Gathered around the wood stove for lunch before returning to work in the sugarbush. Summer 2019 more tenting and camping in the Adirondacks. Again that sense of home. Camping and traveling with Jennifer to Limekiln State Park near Old Forge, N.Y. with her nephew. Tents our home for a few. Fall 2019 the first of our Adirondack rental cabins. A week of home within a log cabin. A wonderful fireplace for basking with morning cups of coffee and chilly October evenings. Another fall at Hill House stacking in the large piles of firewood to heat it and the garage. Sometimes we’d stay at Jennifer’s house where we always felt at home after a day of adventures. Home was wherever we were together. Summer 2020 would find us calling the Adirondacks home more frequently. Tenting in the backcountry as we continued our 46 high peaks quest. Back to the log cabin rental once again at Tupper Lake. I’d leave for Pennslyvania to work for a few months and share a small apartment with my two friends. It was a home of necessity but I never cared much for living there. Dinner times when we shared a meals and conversations were the only time I felt a small sense of home. Sleepless nights missing my loved ones would become my norm as I searched the Pennslyvania countryside looking for a place for them to visit. Fate would not allow it however. I’d return home for good in October shortly after spending a most wonderful week with Jennifer,Zane, and her family at an Adirondack rental in Cranberry Lake. Once again proving that home is not one fixed destination. I spent a couple weeks in late October working on a project on Whiteface Mountain near Lake Placid,N.Y. Once again calling the Adirondacks home for a few. My motel room near Lake Placid was less than home so I moved to a small Airbnb in Saranac Lake. The moment I stepped into my new space I felt at home! Missing my loved ones but knowing they were only a short distance away. Something that was impossible to feel in the suburb city of Beaver, Pennslyvania weeks earlier.December 2020. Jennifer and I spend a few days in a cozy Adirondack Airbnb in Wilmington. That sense of temporary home again as we returned from our daily adventures. I did a quick count just now! I have used the word home 19 times give or take a few! Totally my intent! My objective was simple this morning. I hope that I have succeeded in making you think about all the places you’ve called home over the years. I mentioned just some of mine. We are about to close the door forever here at Hill House. The final door of the old life. The closing of a chapter. Zane is feeling a little sad these days at times but he’s traveled enough now to know that home can be many places for us. As for me I feel little sadness leaving here. I will miss our beautiful views of the lake. Our private location. Our good friends and neighbors who live just down from us.But home for us becomes a blank page once again and a new year of adventures await us. We’ll live at the old cottage for the moment while we decide our next destination. Home will be many places once again this year. We leave Hill House with our many MOONTABS. Home will be where we hang our hats! Always!
Tag Archives: time
Cold Memories From A Warm Heart
A cold morning at Hill House this morning!It’s been a strange winter for sure!Quite mild actually, with minimal snow.The Lake only sports about 8 inches of ice down in front of the house. After last night I expect that changed. As I stepped out to fire the outside wood boiler (aka The Monster) in my bathrobe and Crocs I realized there was a significant wind chill also. A bathrobe and Crocs is standard attire for a retired person up here on the hill. After all what’s the hurry? It’s that time of winter when the increase of daylight becomes noticeable.Icicles form and drip as the sun hits them. Mini avalanches send snow sliding off the southern and western portions of the metal roof with startling rumbles. I have a lifelong fascination with ice. Walking on it.Following the streams and exploring beaver ponds. Taking shortcuts across it to save time. Always looking for that perfect picture of it hanging from ledges. Amazed as the lake ice booms at night as you shine a flashlight on a night set walleye tip up. Ice is powerful. Cracking concrete. Moving foundations and lifting asphalt. A morning such as this reminds me that this morning’s temperature of 7 degrees Fahrenheit is nothing! I am always telling my teenage son Zane about the cold winters of my youth. He scoffs and says “ older people always say things like that!” But I remember many cold days and nights from years ago. The weather began to take a sudden turn here sometime in the eighties. More unpredictable and sporadic. We still had some fierce winters but things were much different. The winters of 1993 and 1994 were some of the coldest in recent history as I recall. The winters of my youth were rather predictable most of the time throughout the seventies. Late November would find the freeze up beginning. By Xmas time the ice was nicely formed and the snow would begin to accumulate. The temperatures would continue to plummet and by January it could be brutal!We would however often get a January thaw that would last a few days then disappear. Nothing like the up and down cycles we endure here now each winter. Sure there were abnormalities and breaks in the patterns occasionally. Typically after the January thaw the weather would remain very cold till March.The first two weeks of February could be some of the coldest we’d get all winter! The sun might shine but when’s it’s minus 20 or below it didn’t matter much! Growing up on the farm winter changed the routine immensely. Everything was more difficult. Snow to shovel.Hungry horses and cows stabled in the warm barn to feed twice a day. Their waste to be removed from the barn each day.Water to keep from freezing as well. Doors and feed holes always sticking. Saturday’s would find us out with the team of horses cutting firewood. We pulled a big work sleigh for hauling the wood to the farmhouse. No fancy dry weave or nylon clothing. Wool was the answer to keeping warm. Wool pants and chopper’s mitts. Wool toques the standard fare. The job of the farm boy was to always break the sleigh runners free with a large steel bar before they could be moved.They’d freeze down to ground and take some effort to free. It was a cycle of life that became the normal. I think it’s why I have this tremendous connection to the seasons. Sometimes it would be too cold to even venture out to work. But that was rare. The daylight would increase and we’d skip work some Saturdays. We’d load our gear and head to the lake for a day of ice fishing. We’d drive right across the lake with the truck on 20 inches plus of ice.Great memories!One winter especially comes to mind. It was 1978 headed into 1979. Xmas day a balmy -25 degrees Fahrenheit. The oil filter on the Ford Mercury burst when trying to start it. The days of that winter would see a 30 day plus run of days that never got above 0 degrees Fahrenheit! Brutal and testing the limits of people and machines! I learned the tricks of survival.Battery chargers and booster cables. Dry gas to keep fuel lines flowing. Fuel injection not yet common as carburetors ruled the realms of internal combustion engines. We didn’t own anything diesel then. The winter of 1979 and 1980 was equally cold. As I think back over the years I can remember so many brutally cold days and nights. So today feeling cold at 7 degrees Fahrenheit seems wimpy! I think we need to put on some dry weave inner layers with a nylon outer layer. Maybe my Gortex hunting jacket. I have been eyeing the real wool outer wear they sell at a store in Malone,N.Y. Perhaps it’s time to return to the old ways. Or maybe a blend of both worlds. One thing I can’t buy at any price is a pair of my Grandmother’s hand knit mittens. Or a wool jacket with a hand stitched cotton neck liner to keep the wool from irritating my skin. We survived those challenging days of years past. We’ve grown soft perhaps with these new winters. Those winters of our ancestors were very real! Not just a figment of aging memories. I know! I lived some of them! Close to nature. I am the fortunate man. To know the swing of seasons with passing days.To learn to care for livestock. To know the value of home heating fuel that came from the forests of the farm. To appreciate the warmth of the farmhouse at the end of the work day. Meat and potatoes to replenish and nourish the weary body. My roots are deep and well planted. For that I know I am truly blessed! The memories will never die if I keep them alive with words. Some things are best left forgotten but some are not. The stories are many and wait to be dredged like buried gold from the years. To leave them uncovered could be a loss. For Zane and all my family. “It’s no bad thing to celebrate a simple life”. (J.R.R. Tolkien)
It’s About Time
Wow time flies! It’s been awhile since I’ve put a post up! No matter I’m in motion now!Balancing time has always been a struggle for me quite honestly. Retirement in 2017 helped tip the scales but I still find myself bogged down with endless details at times.Others feel this way also I notice and it’s an interesting study.Time is the most valuable of commodities in my opinion. I feel to live a well balanced life that it must be considered always. Too often I’ve heard about someone retiring then dying shortly after before they truly got to appreciate the blessings it could offer. Sad but true. I’ve always valued time but my cancer incident of 2009 would change me forever. This following our father’s untimely death from cancer complications in 2007.It laid the groundwork for early retirement like nothing ever could have accomplished. I expect to write a piece on cancer eventually. It touches many people’s lives and I can write from experience. I am blessed to have a positive outcome.Physically and mentally.My message today is to tell you that I have been busy not writing but preparing for the next chapter of my life. It’s time for a big change. Overdue in fact. This is our sixth winter here at Hill House. If all goes well it will be our last. We are ready to move on to a different place in 2021. There’s nothing wrong with this unique and beautiful location. It’s something else. Living here takes too much time away from the other places we wish to experience. So we’re busy marketing the house. Finishing outstanding projects and making repairs. It’s time consuming but I treat it like a job these days. Moving from here also will close out a different chapter of my life. I call it my “old life”. Not necessary to explain all that has transpired since 2017. It’s just a statement of “It’s About Time”. I think it’s important to explain one thing however.People who know my house is up for sale always ask “where will you go if you sell it? It’s a fair and logical question. One that deserves an honest answer.My answer is perplexing to some however! I don’t have a real plan!Nor does it matter!Time will show us our direction. It’s that fork in the road moment where you will need to make a decision. But not today this time. It’s not intimidating at all. I think of it as an adventure. Perhaps it’s my boyhood imagination that never leaves me. The story my father told me about an event on the farm many decades ago. I truly believe that home is where the heart finds itself. I certainly treasure my connection to the farm. It was my home for many years. It had yet to show its true purpose just yet. I refer to it as home base these days. The center of a tossed pebble from which the ripples will head out in all directions. Adventure waits for us to find it. We won’t truly experience all we seek and desire with out chasing it. So it’s time to move on and begin to write the next chapters. With love and passion. No time like the present they say. Time waits for no man. (Or woman!)The confusion you may find in this post will pass! All will be answered in time. The word time is written many times in this post! My intent. I hope you took the time to read it!The vision of MOONTABS has not changed. There’s lots going on behind the scenes.Give it some time!