Our family travels consisted of going to "the country house." In 1937, my
father's parents bought a "place" in central Connecticut, a tiny, ancient farmhouse
set among fields, brooks, and backing on woods that are now part of a state
forest. During World War II, they'd stay up there all summer, growing Victory
Gardens and raising chickens, and the house has remained in the family ever
since; now owned by my father.
Every summer, at some point we would get our "week" there (during my grandparents'
lifetimes we also shared the house with my uncles' families). This meant a
week of unstructured time: wading in the brooks looking for frogs, swimming
in the icy-cold pond, playing baseball and croquet in the fields (using old
1930s-era ball gloves and bats and an equally ancient croquet set), working
in the tool-shop making bird houses and toy boats, bushwacking through the woods
in search of old stone walls and the foundations from the early settlers' farms.
Our neighbors, whom my father knew for decades, used to have a huge dairy-farm,
and we'd help get the cows in at night and load hay in the lofts.
This is what we did every summer, for 21 years straight, and I would not have
traded them for any argosy on Earth. After that, we went up for shorter stays,
not all of us at once--people were at college, on other trips, or growing up
and moving out, but we'd still find time to be there together. As I said, the
place is still in the family, and I just got back from the weekend there.
My brother's family came to visit, and my 12-year-old nephew is learning how
to drive the lawn-tractor and run the lawn-mower, and my niece was eager to
hike in the woods as we searched for the Oldest Tree in the Woods, a gigantic
oak with a trunk wider than my outstretched arms, that wouldn't look out of
place in Fanghorn.
All around us, the farms have been chopped up for housing developments, Main
Street is full of national brand stores, but we are holding on, surrounded by
the forest and fields, keeping the same timeless "country life" experience going
for ourselves and our future generations.