Walking the Berkshires

Windrock Saved!

Things have moved remarkably swiftly since the logjam with the Wareham Selectmen gave way last Tuesday, and all 5 of them gave their unanimous endorsement of our Conservation Restriction.  This morning my Uncle Rob learned that all was ready for closing, and this afternoon the papers passed and so at long last our hopes have been realized. After two years of active negotiation -  and several more before that building consensus among ourselves, the extended Barker family has successfully sold a conservation restriction over 19.55 acres of woodland (a purchase authorized not once but twice by the Town voters from Wareham's Community Preservation Act funds).  The restriction is co-held by the Town of Wareham, Massachusetts and Wareham Land Trust and is the first of what we all hope and expect will be numerous conservation restrictions to go in place across Great Neck as our neighbors and their conservation partners work to conserve not only their own lands but a significant portion of the large Sacred Hearts property adjacent to ours as well.

I am tremendously proud of this family.  It is an extraodinary achievement, not only because saving family land is inherently challenging, but also because this process has made our close family even stronger.  Its willingness to look hard at our relationships to this place, to each other, and to the best way to honor my grandparents vision while providing the next generations with a way to keep it has been the key to our success.  Saving family land is meaningless if you lose the family, and I am deeply grateful to each and every one of them for their care and commitment.

While we had the benefit of an excellent local lawyer, a surveyor and an appraiser along the way, in addition to that we had a superb family negotiating team.  My Uncle John who himself is a skilled attorney was a very careful reviewer, especially when we had the Town's lawyer, the State's reviewer, the Land Trust and our family all tweaking the language of our agreement practically in real time.  My Uncle Rob was a tireless representative of our family's interests at interminable town meetings as well as in the regular flurries of e-mail negotiations that at times occupied as much of our time as our regular jobs.  His appreciation for the nature of Town government and fervent belief that what seemed like insurmountable obstacles might become mere setbacks were a tremendous help to us.  Both Rob and John's time and talent were critical to our success and I am deeply grateful to both of them for their love and support.

We made a great team, and the ability to work so well together across generations was an added pleasure.  This was no simple task, and there were many (many) convolutions along that way, but the outcome tonight is very close to the one envisioned at the outset, and one which I know would make my Gran and Grandpop very proud. 

For me personally, it is profoundly meaningful to have been able to place my professional skills in service of this great family and its wonderful conservation accomplishment.  I know, too, that there is no greater contribution I could make than to help us save Windrock.  Knowing that my children and their children can look forward to knowing this place and finding their place in the ever growing family that revolves around its center is a source of deep joy and satisfaction.

Windrock Watch: "God Bless Us, Everyone!"

Christmas came early for our family, and in of all unlikely places a meeting of the Town of Wareham Board of Selectmen.  Those of you who have been following the 2 year odyssey of our negotiations for the sale of a conservation restriction or easement to help keep this family land intact and in the family for generations to come know it has been a journey fraught with twists and turns, setbacks and strong resolve to find a way to make this happen. 

Last week, with a renewed vote of the citizens of Wareham at their annual Town Meeting this Fall to go forward with this transaction, the Selectmen decided that the sign-off that they had received from their attorney was not in the form they needed from the firm that provides Town Council and held up their formal endorsement of the conservation restriction, which is an absolute requirement under Massachusetts Law before it can be recorded. 

Last night, with very little discussion, they gave it their unanimous approval and signed.  With any luck, we could go to closing as early as next week, or if vacation schedules make that difficult then in early January. 

One of my cousins remarked that the Selectmen have actually done us a huge favor by delaying this project by six months until they were fully satisfied they could sign it, because had we been paid in June we would have lost a very large chunk of the proceeds in the stock market crash.  As it is, with careful planning we should have enough to rebuild the original trust that cared for my grandmother and now can help keep the land and the family together while adding a critical piece of conservation land to a remarkable 300-acre land protection effort among our neighbors and several conservation entities.

We all is signed and sealed, we shall sound the tucket.  My grandparents, wherever they may be, are most assuredly smiling.

Latest LJ Piece: "A Midnight Clear

My biweekly column is up in today's Lakeville Journal (readable here with free registration).  You will find it on page 1 below the fold if you have the print edition.  The topic was the winter sky, though as readers of this blog know full well, that proved merely an opportunity to branch out and draw in many other thoughts and experiences:  A taste:

"Two wanderers are dancing cheek to cheek on these December nights. Perhaps you have seen them stepping out in early evening, low in the sky with sinking Sagittarius. The brighter of the two is luminous Venus, a coy mistress who never lingers long. Her steady partner is Jupiter, holding down this particular patch of the celestial dance floor since the beginning of the year.  Venus and Jupiter have made an assignation to renew their tryst in the dark before the dawn, but not until May of 2011. Come the New Year she will be off  to other lovers — flirting first in Aquarius — leaving her partner with mad-eyed Mars. "

 Enjoy.

 

Buzzard's Eye View

(photo credit Jay Heard)

This is Windrock from the air.  The photographer has managed almost exactly to capture the full frontage of the property - roughtly 400 ft' -  on Buzzards Bay.  It runs a mile back into those woods.  The advance of that line of houses in the background is what our pending conservation easement with the Town of Wareham and Wareham Land Trust is meant to prevent. 

We are going back before October's Town Meeting for a reauthorization of the purchase of our easement using Wareham's Community Preservation Act funds.  Stay tuned.

Faded Spines, Musty Memories

Blogging is light this holiday weekend.  We are down at Windrock, rusticating in the big house by the sea, and unlike of previous visit we have the place largely to ourselves.  There are renters in the little house - the parents of the groom at a wedding being held down the beach on Indian Neck, but the big house is ours and each of we four have found time to carve out for ourselves in various cozy corners to settle down with our favorite Windrock things.  For Elias, this means rediscovering the collection of toys, begun when my aunts and uncle were small and carrying on to the present day.  For Emily, this means finding the dress up clothes and then settling in with a good book done up like Lady Jane Kropotkin or a pirate chieftain.  For Viv, it means having the large kitchen table to spread out her PTO and library plans and enjoy the luxury of space to work.

I go for the bookshelves.  I seldom bring something to read with me to Windrock because like all great summer homes the place is teeming with reading material.  It is less like the second hand bookshop it was when my grandmother lived here and had all her faculties - there has been a significant purge of utter clutter to get the big house in shape for renters - but still, the "children's room" has books stacked to the ceiling on cases that were extended using boards and bricks, and in "the library" the shelves actually have some rhyme and reason to what they contain. 

There is, for instance, most of an entire stack dedicated to field guides and books of the sea.  Among those for the flora and fauna of our part of North America are volumes that speak of the travels of family members, like the guide to the Birds of West Africa used in the 1970s by my Uncle Rob when he was collecting samples in Nigeria and Egypt with Yale's Peabody Museum.  There is also a tattered, cover-less paperback that I am astounded and delighted survived the last "dumptser weekend" and that has its own story to tell.  It was published in a series of standard military books and manuals by the Science Service and Infantry Journal, Washington during World War II and is entitled; "What To Do Aboard a Transport".  From the CoPublisher's forward:

(T)here can be few who have not been curious about many of the shipboard sights and activities this book describes.  It answers most of the questions that come to the mind of the landsman at sea - questions often not answered before the transport (or other ship) leaves port...At the very least, "What To Do Aboard a Transport" will help speed the slow days of voyage.

My grandfather took it with him to the Pacific and used it to teach himself celestial navigation, a skill he later used to help a navy plane find its way back across the dark Ocean to its island base when it lost the services of its navigator.

The books in this house hold the history of the people who have stayed here and the families who have lived here.  My grandparents purchased Windrock together with its contents, and some of these were books.  The inside plates of many of the grand old Wyeth illustrated copies of "The Black Arrow" and "Treasure island" bear the names of the various members of the Fish family, the previous owner, and a few even of the Lyman family, the first owner who build the house in the late 19th century.  Some have the names of the Boston bookseller, and others reveal their origins as coming from the estates of other branches of the family.  A few are very old - 17th century with dry leather bindings - and among the more recent of these sort I found the volume XVII of a year's worth of St Nicholas Magazine, published by The Century for boys and girls in the latter decades of the 1800s.  There are thrilling tales of adventure, death at sea and ivory hunting in central Africa - just the thing for eager young minds.  One of the authors is a young Theodore Roosevelt, and his piece about buffalo hunting during the twilight of the great herds is illustrated by Frederick Remington.

Adventure stories abound in this house.  All the Jack London you can handle, stories of impossible exposure and survival after being torpedoed, stories like "The Sea Adler" about a WWI German wind powered commerce raider, all wait for new eyes to discover them.  Most of these books are like those in your local library that are almost never checked out, but unlike your local library's collection these shabby volumes have not been tossed out or sold.  They are the soul of the house, the thing that keeps it from becoming a sterile rental that was never a home. 

This weekend, instead of blogging I will be casting my eye across their faded spines, eager to see where they take me.

Seconds

Here is the power of place.  This group of cousins, perched on the rock by the sea, gathered in the early 1950s.  That's my mother third from the left in the back row, with Tigerhawk and Charlottesvillian's father second from the right.  More than 55 years later (with one last cousin added and one passed on), these families returned with children and grandchildren in tow.  There were too many of us for a group portrait, but there was an effort to take a 1st cousins shot (with some 2nds and 3rds and assorted friends and relations in there, too). 

Inclusion and belonging, down through the years at Windrock: Gran's greatest gifts.

"Seagulls Sing Your Hearts Away"

"Bring tea for the Tillerman
Steak for the sun
Wine for the women who made the rain come"

The grand encampment of Barker and Ogden kith and kin over the 4th of July weekend at Windrock involved so many friends and relations one needed a scorecard to keep track of them all.  Fortunately, my cousin John's wife Megan used her graphic design skills to collect and display two family trees with names dates and thumbnail photographs for practically everyone in 5 generations from my maternal great grandparents on down to a baby on the way.  Several of us provided the genealogical data and tracked down needed images, but the end result allowed us all to puzzle out such things as who went with whom and what a 2nd cousin once removed looks like.

I took fewer photographs of the festivities than I had intended, or rather I focused on recording certain stages while actively participating in others. I have no pictures of the extraordinary drip castles on the unexpected sand bar revealed by an unusually low tide, nor the swarms of children who helped to construct them or dig quahogs rooted out by searching toes.  I did not get pictures of the intergenerational baseball and soccer games that sprang up on the lawn.  I had many conversations with wonderful people, and so have no regrets on that score.

"Seagulls sing your hearts away
'Cause while the sinners sin, the children play"

There were some things that defied photography, like the phosphorescence that made the still waters glow for midnight swimmers, and the fireworks that erupted up and down the shore on both sides of the bay and behind Great Neck. 

No one, I believe, wanted any pictures of the most dramatic and terrifying event of the weekend, when the Angle of Death dipped so near we could feel the beating of its wings. My cousin Colin broke out in hives and soon went into anaphylactic shock in the water where quick heads, sound medical knowledge and other people's EpiPens kept him alive until the EMTs arrived.   My cousins John and Margaret happened to be with Colin when he collapsed and pulled him to shore, and they were outwardly shaking (as were we all inwardly) for hours afterward.  In our number there were an EMT, a doctor, and the head ER nurse at the local hospital (who as it happens is also Colin's mother).  My cousin Jay and my cousin Leila's husband Pete the EMT together had three EpiPens and it took two of these to have any effect.  But for them and the grace of God, we would have suffered a terrible tragedy.  The next morning when Colin walked toward us like Lazarus with his family as we laid my grandmother's remains in Earth, he was greeted with shining eyes and a round of spontaneous applause.  There was even more joy and thanksgiving in the church that Saturday from this largely secular family as we celebrated my Grandmother's life and our personal Passover.

"Oh Lord how they play and play
For that happy day, for that happy day"

There are three stones where my grandparents remains reside.  One of these is the veteran's stone that acknowledges Grandpop's service in the Pacific during WWII.  There is now another paired with it that lists Gran's full name and the Hebrew word "Mizpah", with which she used to close many a letter to loved ones away from home.  It may be translated:

"May the Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another."

The third stone comes from Windrock itself and is newly etched with her first and maiden names and years of birth and death.  It says Barker on another of its faces, and on the top are two words - "Gone Fishing" - which are less irreverent than they seem.  My Uncle Rob, when a young boy, learned about the water table in school and decided that when people are buried they could go fishing there.  This so tickled my grandfather that he said he would like those words on his tombstone, and this was remembered many decades later and dutifully done. 

Those two inscriptions are fitting bookends for these two extraordinary lives, the earthy and the ethereal, and are streams that run deep in all of our veins.

"Oh Lord how they play and play
For that happy day, for that happy day"

                                  - Cat Stevens

Simple Gifts

This past weekend, our vast and extended families and lifelong friends gathered at Windrock on the shores of Buzzards Bay to honor the memory of my grandmother and reaffirm our devotion to each other.  Someone may have an accurate count, for we managed to feed a legion at least with food to spare, but I am certain we topped 100 on Saturday.  It was the sort of event that saw people pitch in at all levels, often seeing gaps and stepping in to fill them, like the elderly college friends of my eldest aunt who helped me fill three hundred baked stuffed clams.  There are many, many memories, and I'll write more about the gathering, but for the moment I want to share a few examples of the offerings of love and gifts of tremendous talent that were so evident this weekend.

My Uncle Rob crafted a box for my grandmother's cremated remains out of hemlock and ceder wood from our property.  My mother says there never was a tree that Gran didn't like, and these two woods were beautifully paired.  When my Grandfather died, Rob also made a lovely box for him, and the night before the internment a group of family members went around adding representative things to its contents - sand from the beach, paint chips from the house - and decided that the most appropriate place for it to remain that night was on the seat of the old antique tractor in the barn.  In Gran's case, her box rested on the mantle in the living room with the glorious views of the lawn and bay she so loved in life, with a few representative geraniums standing in for the phalanxes of flowers she habitually stacked several ranked deep before the picture windows.  At the graveside there was another red geranium, and a bowl of specially collected jingle shells from the beach that children added at the internment.  The sexton at the Agawam Cemetery made the hole with such precision that her box almost touches that of her beloved Bob, who predeceased her 17 years ago

As much as Gran loved flowers and trees, her eyes went joyfully to the skies, following every silver contrail or lingering sunset with fresh delight.  She and my Mom shared an unabashed love for birds, from chickadees at the feeder to darting tree swallows out by the garden.  Ospreys, though, had even greater meaning.  They mate for life, and at Windrock though they never established a nest on the pole erected for that purpose after Grandpop died, they hover and glide on the southwest breeze and our hearts lift with their wild cries.  My mother the quilter made this stunning creation of a pair of these marvelous birds and it now hangs in the living room at Windrock.  There is the bay, the mound of rocks that form the breakwater, and the bracken and scrub at the edge of the bluff.  She has absolutely nailed the birds, and the symbolism of the bird flying homeward into the frame to rejoin its partner so perfectly captures the hope of reunion, in this place for our family and in the next world for my grandparents.

Photographs do little justice to her tremendous  talent, but by all means click to enlarge.

This is a family that sings at the least provocation, and my Aunt Happy is always game to accompany a full-throated sing-along as evening shadows fell. The first night, we worked our way through old favorites - The Ship Titanic, The Sloop John B - and new ones, like the Canadian Sea Shanty with blue-wooded call and response my cousin's son Elihu leanred and taught us all:

"Oh, the year was 1778, HOW I WISH I WAS IN SHERBROOKE NOW!
A letter of marque came from the king,
To the scummiest vessel I'd ever seen,

God damn them all!
I was told we'd cruise the seas for American gold
We'd fire no guns , shed no tears
Now I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier
The last of Barrett's Privateers."

We are partial to nautical disasters, down-and-out ballads and standards of the American songbook.  I myself lead is in a grand version of Rocky Raccoon.

The greatest gifts of all were the gifts of self, the old friends and family both proximate and distant who all made the effort to come together at this extraordinary place to celebrate an extraordinary life that touched us all and abides with us still.  Every one of my mother's living cousins on her mother's side and many of their spouses, children and grandchildren came, and the lion's share of those on her father's side.  Every one of my first cousins and their families came.  My second cousins Tigerhawk and the Charlottesvillian were there, and it was such fun to watch their children and ours - third cousins! -engaged together in play. 

In the interest of bilateral relations I happily accepted the proffered Tigerhawk T-shirt (photo credit TH, who took it with his camera phone and e-mailed it to me moments later) and wore it with pride in the knowledge that blood is thicker than water and good people trump partisan politics every time.   I cleverly distracted my generally liberal family members with platters of stuffed quahogs, and after all, our dear grandmother was the most independent of Republicans.

Many people worked over many months to get the old place into the best shape it has been in decades for this event.  In honor of that effort, inside and out, I took this picture - a view that would have been impossible before my father undertook much clearing of scrub oak and poison ivy.   Garden beds were planted, and marigolds ringed the glacial rock in the lawn  as had been done by my grandmother in earlier times.  This winter and spring saw three bedrooms utterly renovated and the place has never looked better.  Long may it remain the land that sustains our souls and draws us back to each other.

Switched at Birth: American Revolution Edition (Part II)

I had way too much fun finding modern look alikes for our colonial  forebears to let it go with just one post.  I'm still looking for a 21st-century George Washington - and who isn't - as well as Franklin, Hamilton and Jefferson, and if you can find a doppleganger for these icons please pass it on.

Meanwhile, have you ever noticed the resemblance between Don King and Mad Anthony Wayne?

How about Madonna and George III?  Or Sam Waterson and Thomas Payne?  I'm proud of that one.

 

Getting Close

For more than 2 years, our family has been working to negotiate the sale of a conservation easement (called Conservation Restrictions or CRs in MA and CT) on +/- 19.55 acres of our beloved "Windrock"  in Wareham, MA.   This is what I do professionally, but this time it is on behalf of my children, parents, sister, aunts, uncles, and cousins.  Saving land takes time, and getting agreement on the terms of a CR on behalf of so many when there are two co-holders and a host of reviewers is a tall order.  There are many ups and downs and you learn to hold a steady course and respond in a timely fashion to whatever challenge arises.

I don't want to jinx it.  But we are now within three weeks of a tentative closing data and we are feverishly working through the conservation transaction punch list. Our family has come together in an extraordinary way to do what is right for the property and honor the love and conservation vision of my grandparents Robert and Athalia Barker, who bought the place more than 61 years ago and wanted it to remain in the family and as intact and unspoilt as possible.   Selling this CR allows us to retain title to the entire property and helps ensure that we can maintain it as we have loved it for future generations to enjoy.

We can see the runway and are preparing to land.  When it is over and we all can exhale, I'll share the details.