Farewell to Fall

This house is a personal favourite. It is one that I had made ahead of time because I knew it would take too long to construct this on site. Also I needed to experiment with building portable houses because of an upcoming show... more on this in future posts.

So, this house was made over the course of several days. It features a front entranceway with peep windows on the sides. A bay window, a second tower with another latticed window and a porch with a fungus roof. All done in the "Adirondack" style. The foundation is made from riverstones carefully collected from my beloved river. The roof is made from Red Pine bark "shingles" laid over a birch twig frame. Green fungus and small lichens decorate the roof. It was such fun to make !

But, it was a very heavy piece, due to the stone foundation. Still... I really wanted it to have a mountain top view, so I carefully packaged up the house into a totebag and headed up Little Crow mountain in the Keene valley. The pathway was quite steep and several times I wondered if it would be worth it.. the bag seemed to get heavier and heavier as I got higher.

Eventually the open faced ledges came into view and it was blissfully beautiful up there in the warm waning rays of the day. I found a great location with what appeared to be a set of stairs in the background leading up to the house...it looked as if it belonged there once I got the mossy landscaping in place.

The sun was dipping low along the ridges so I was able to only get a few good shots, but it WAS worth it. I also brought up a little canister of my Dad's ashes and built a little Spirit House for them over on the west side of the summit. An ancient Birch tree offered a beautiful little nook for a resting place. He would have loved the view. Just as I was completing the work, a sundog appeared in the clouds... and shortly afterwards, a Raven flew thru the rainbow. A very powerful message for me... I felt very blessed.