All Wrong for January
Sunday I took my first real walk around the grounds. A light freezing rain falling, I crunched across an ice-stiffened carpet of fallen pine tassel and glazed orange oak leaf. Ice coated emerald green mosses and brightened bare black branches to dull hematite sheen... colours all wrong for January's pallet.
Chickens appear to have been invited guests of Yaddo at some time. Their sagging long-abandoned coups are not the only half-ruined or boarded-up buildings one stumbles upon in these woods in winter. The northern edge of the estate edges on the Saratoga Race Track stables, all empty. In season the roar of the crowds can be heard at Yaddo. Especially, as one guest who has been here in summer pointed out, if you ditch your writing and join them in the stands.
According to a postcard procured from the Yaddo office, the stone tower is the Acosta Nichols Studio. According to Yaddo Yesterday and Today, the pamphlet written by Marjorie Peabody Waite in 1933 that’s left in all our bedrooms for perusal, the tower was built to store the year’s ice-supply, back in the days when ice was cut from lakes. A pretty idea, but not practical: condensation accumulating inside the stone tower, dungeon style, made the ice melt faster. The fanciful upper half of the tower is or was a composer’s studio. But not right now. Like the mansion and the chicken coop the stone tower is closed for winter.
Rain fell on a thin layer of lake ice frozen green. A sign said: No Swimming. Okay!
More freezing rain fell in the night. Much more. I woke to a sharp crack followed by a shower of glassy-tinkle. An ice storm. Anyone who was in Montréal for the big one knows the sound of big branches falling. And plenty fell today. I watched through my sun porch studio’s three walls of windows. The irony of “sun porch” in January never ceases.
Something went though George’s rear windshield so for a while everyone was out there moving cars. Cause shit’s coming down, my housemate said in a hurry to get to open ground. It’s five o’clock, still raining and the big branches are still coming down. Only now it’s dark and I can’t see them, only hear them, and jump, and imagine how far off they are, or how near. Okay, that one was damn near.
Pine Garde sun porch the morning after.
. . . . .
Chickens appear to have been invited guests of Yaddo at some time. Their sagging long-abandoned coups are not the only half-ruined or boarded-up buildings one stumbles upon in these woods in winter. The northern edge of the estate edges on the Saratoga Race Track stables, all empty. In season the roar of the crowds can be heard at Yaddo. Especially, as one guest who has been here in summer pointed out, if you ditch your writing and join them in the stands.
According to a postcard procured from the Yaddo office, the stone tower is the Acosta Nichols Studio. According to Yaddo Yesterday and Today, the pamphlet written by Marjorie Peabody Waite in 1933 that’s left in all our bedrooms for perusal, the tower was built to store the year’s ice-supply, back in the days when ice was cut from lakes. A pretty idea, but not practical: condensation accumulating inside the stone tower, dungeon style, made the ice melt faster. The fanciful upper half of the tower is or was a composer’s studio. But not right now. Like the mansion and the chicken coop the stone tower is closed for winter.
Rain fell on a thin layer of lake ice frozen green. A sign said: No Swimming. Okay!
More freezing rain fell in the night. Much more. I woke to a sharp crack followed by a shower of glassy-tinkle. An ice storm. Anyone who was in Montréal for the big one knows the sound of big branches falling. And plenty fell today. I watched through my sun porch studio’s three walls of windows. The irony of “sun porch” in January never ceases.
Something went though George’s rear windshield so for a while everyone was out there moving cars. Cause shit’s coming down, my housemate said in a hurry to get to open ground. It’s five o’clock, still raining and the big branches are still coming down. Only now it’s dark and I can’t see them, only hear them, and jump, and imagine how far off they are, or how near. Okay, that one was damn near.
Pine Garde sun porch the morning after.
. . . . .
Labels: Yaddo
posted by J. R. Carpenter at
12:18 PM
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