Hard to imagine...

Fourteen days to go...'til our first anniversary....Hard to imagine.

Fifteen days 'til we close on the house we have dreamed of. Hard to imagine.

Seventeen days 'til we begin the move. It will probably take two days to get everything moved from one garage to another garage, another day to clean up the house on South St., and many days 'til everything is ensconced in its appointed place.  Finding the appointed places may be the biggest challenge of all. Blending our households in physical space will be far different than blending our lives, and we have had the "luxury" of keeping two places that remained more or less distinct...That will be changing, albeit not all at once. Hard to imagine  that too.


I walked the boundaries of the southern section of the land today with the surveyor. Nice guy down from Bristol, Vermont. We will soon own the land abutting two official, and one unofficial, rights of way.

I know the least about the one on the same side of the street as "our" house. That right of way gives road access  to two houses on the northern corner of "our" land.  One is a hunting cabin and the other is a house owned by a couple that used to teach in Romania during the winter. They are now here full time, but I don't know them well. I once talked with them about renting their house, but I didn't want to have to move out in the summer. For the foreseeable future, I won't have to rent anyone else's house again. Hard to imagine.

The right of way on the southeast is mostly on our neighbors', the Blooms, land, but the corner where it reaches the road is ours. In the 19th century, it allowed the two Gray brothers who owned abutting property, to reach each others' fields. I know that, because Donald, our surveyor, was doing research in the town records, where Laura, the town clerk, opened up the office just for him. That's the kind of town we live in. Can you imagine that in a city? On the day when the employees have off, they open the office just because someone needs to review the records? Hard to imagine.

There are remnant sections of stone walls, and one very long one that still marks those lines. I may walk the long stone wall some day soon, crossing from our land to the neighbors', and I will walk back through the "Vail Meadow" that has been farmed for 200 years, though it is now also owned by the Blooms who live away.

When I pass through the line of brush that separates the Vail Farm from another meadow (also owned by the Blooms),  I will be on the unofficial right of way that connects the two meadows across a line of brush that used to mark the border between the two separate parcels. But that unofficial right of way departs from the remnant stone wall, and the Blooms may be surprised to know that we actually own that section of the meadow that they are having hayed. No worries. We don't expect to  reclaim it, though it might be nice to set a bench at the corner to access a particularly pretty view. And there is a large maple tree that could be tapped next Spring, though carrying the sap buckets up hill would qualify as extreme aerobics. Donald, the surveyor, suggested that we might plant berry bushes where there is now some scrub along that remnant stone wall. Good idea.

There is something important about the idea that we have land that includes "rights-of-way".  It is an odd notion in an era of ownership and property lines and gated communities. It says something about honoring shared needs for access. It says something about believing that your neighbor will use the right of way respectfully. It says something about believing that even though the properties will change hands over the years to come, you believe that the new owners will also behave respectfully.

Donald, the surveyor was in the town office doing his research for us, when a family came in to do some research on another right of way. There are many parcels in this town that can only be accessed through the willingness of one landowner to allow another one to reach the road across her land.

 Sounds like a marker of community to me.

When Herb and I married 339 days ago, on the hillside above the town, Emmett cleaned up the sides of the road that cut through a neighbor's land, improving it  for us and for the use of our friends. There were people who had lived their whole lives in this town, who had never seen that view, but thanks to him, they could see the beauty of this place we live, in a whole new way....a kind of community.

The dairy farmer whose son was manuring that unofficial right of way and the Vail Meadow, and our strip of land later that day, tilled and fertilized the garden here as a wedding present last year, and Nan and Lois and Judy brought flowering plants, perennials, as a gift, but also as a way of helping our friends to see this land in a different way. Those perennials, the johnny-jump-ups, rudbeckia, flags and pulmonaria will be shaping the way people see this place for many years to come, whether they rent, as I have, or own the place they grow. A kind of community.

I am the ostensible President of a long-quiescent organization called the Taconic Trails Club.  Founded by a group of local friends, its mandate is to provide public access to private land for hiking, cross-country skiing and bird watching. The press of other responsibilities and the departure of most of the Board members has left the organization in limbo. Perhaps it is time, now that the President has three rights-of-way on her soon-to-be land, to see if there is any interest in resurrection.  Hard to imagine, but perhaps.