good neighbors
Next door to our new house is a children's camp. It's a classic, rustic, outdoors-only camp with archery, fishing, swimming pools, crafts, and a loyal following. The camp has a Lord of the Rings theme-- like, original nerd stuff, started back in the 1970s. It's pretty great.
So the last few months we could hear the kids screaming and laughing over the river during the daylight hours. But the camp only runs for 10 weeks in the summer. The rest of the year, the equipment is packed away and the land sits quietly waiting for the children to return.
Our friend Ben runs the camp during hectic hot summer days and mainstains the space alone during the long off-season. For a short season he's managing 200 people on site and the, all of a sudden, he's there by himself. I am fascinated by this experience and how he manages it. He loves camp. He loves the land. He loves nature. He wishes he could do more. And he's a generous, intriguing neighbor to us newcomers.
A few weeks ago on the weekend, I asked Ben to take me over the The Hobbit House, where the children do crafts. The house was built by Dr. Isaac Cannady and inhabited by his family in the late 1800s, then later by the Umsteads, whose daughter ultimately founded the camp before she passed away years ago. It's an historic site in Durham County, but certainly not preserved in the way you would expect. I've done a lot of research on the history of our little pocket of Durham County and discovered that the Cannadys also lived in our house at one point. I'll share more about that later. But I knew I wanted a peek inside The Hobbit House to see if it was similar to ours. What clues might there be about the family whose space we assumed 150 years later?
Ben is a good sport. He met me at the house while the kids were napping at home and I hopped the fence. It was not at all what I expected, and not at all similar to our home, but it opened some new doors in my mind about picturing the history of the family.
The house is now essentially a shelter for camp -- no plumbing or air conditioning or anything you'd expect. It's been vandalized by a generation of bored and sweaty campers who left their mark on every exposed surfact: green paint handprints, doodles, and "Christopher wuz here 2012." It has a wide hallway bridging together 4 rooms, presumably living space and bedrooms for the parents and their many children. A few historic details still poke through to tell their story-- old door handles, rugged floorboards, and post-and-lintel mantles around each fireplace. There's a kiln inside, and tons of space for messy projects. I reminisced about glazing pottery at a summer job in college. "You can use the kiln any time," Ben offered. "No thanks," I replied. I'm good.
Most interesting to me, the front porch of the home appeared to be on the back, away from the current road. I was so surprised by this until Ben explained. The original road had been on the other side of the house, and we walked up to see the flat bed where it had run, the original supports for the bridge across the river, and huge chunks of granite and concrete that might have supported it.
There's a surprising amount of elevation on that side of the road, and we trespassed up a ways up the hill and away from camp to see more of the river. Beautiful, gentle rapids over rocks and deeper pools for fishing. The old wall that held the mill that helped fuel this tiny antebellum town of South Lowell, NC. No wonder the house faced this way over the river! It was beautiful and vibrant and hidden. The adjacent landowners, I'm sure, keep this secret behind their thick bamboo planted at the road. But Ben said they never seem to mind when he takes the kids back there. Or at least no one has said so.
Back closer to the house, there were pieces of glass and other materials half-buried in mud near the old road bed. Ben explained. The same way people throw their trash into our yard as they drive by on the road now in 2019... people did the same 80 years ago on the road then. It's 80-year-old trash still piled at the old road site. We poked around and saw amber glass Clorox bottles from the 1940s, tin cans, and miscellaneous other debris. Ben seemed to get a kick out of the items he could collect. (This from the same dude who asked me to save "anything cool and dead" that we find in our yard.)
A neglected empty home, trespassing in the woods, and some broken glass. I know it doesn't sound glamorous. But I love to better understand this space we steward now. Instead of trampling on the history I want to at least understand the stories. We're planning to work with Ben to build a path from our house to camp, from which point we can walk under the bridge and up the river if we wish. Connecting the dots where one family once lived. With the occasional sharp reminders that none of us are saints, everyone dumps their trash, and there are huge transgressions in every season of history.
I hope we leave it better than we found it.
So the last few months we could hear the kids screaming and laughing over the river during the daylight hours. But the camp only runs for 10 weeks in the summer. The rest of the year, the equipment is packed away and the land sits quietly waiting for the children to return.
Our friend Ben runs the camp during hectic hot summer days and mainstains the space alone during the long off-season. For a short season he's managing 200 people on site and the, all of a sudden, he's there by himself. I am fascinated by this experience and how he manages it. He loves camp. He loves the land. He loves nature. He wishes he could do more. And he's a generous, intriguing neighbor to us newcomers.
A few weeks ago on the weekend, I asked Ben to take me over the The Hobbit House, where the children do crafts. The house was built by Dr. Isaac Cannady and inhabited by his family in the late 1800s, then later by the Umsteads, whose daughter ultimately founded the camp before she passed away years ago. It's an historic site in Durham County, but certainly not preserved in the way you would expect. I've done a lot of research on the history of our little pocket of Durham County and discovered that the Cannadys also lived in our house at one point. I'll share more about that later. But I knew I wanted a peek inside The Hobbit House to see if it was similar to ours. What clues might there be about the family whose space we assumed 150 years later?
Ben is a good sport. He met me at the house while the kids were napping at home and I hopped the fence. It was not at all what I expected, and not at all similar to our home, but it opened some new doors in my mind about picturing the history of the family.
The house is now essentially a shelter for camp -- no plumbing or air conditioning or anything you'd expect. It's been vandalized by a generation of bored and sweaty campers who left their mark on every exposed surfact: green paint handprints, doodles, and "Christopher wuz here 2012." It has a wide hallway bridging together 4 rooms, presumably living space and bedrooms for the parents and their many children. A few historic details still poke through to tell their story-- old door handles, rugged floorboards, and post-and-lintel mantles around each fireplace. There's a kiln inside, and tons of space for messy projects. I reminisced about glazing pottery at a summer job in college. "You can use the kiln any time," Ben offered. "No thanks," I replied. I'm good.
Most interesting to me, the front porch of the home appeared to be on the back, away from the current road. I was so surprised by this until Ben explained. The original road had been on the other side of the house, and we walked up to see the flat bed where it had run, the original supports for the bridge across the river, and huge chunks of granite and concrete that might have supported it.
There's a surprising amount of elevation on that side of the road, and we trespassed up a ways up the hill and away from camp to see more of the river. Beautiful, gentle rapids over rocks and deeper pools for fishing. The old wall that held the mill that helped fuel this tiny antebellum town of South Lowell, NC. No wonder the house faced this way over the river! It was beautiful and vibrant and hidden. The adjacent landowners, I'm sure, keep this secret behind their thick bamboo planted at the road. But Ben said they never seem to mind when he takes the kids back there. Or at least no one has said so.
Back closer to the house, there were pieces of glass and other materials half-buried in mud near the old road bed. Ben explained. The same way people throw their trash into our yard as they drive by on the road now in 2019... people did the same 80 years ago on the road then. It's 80-year-old trash still piled at the old road site. We poked around and saw amber glass Clorox bottles from the 1940s, tin cans, and miscellaneous other debris. Ben seemed to get a kick out of the items he could collect. (This from the same dude who asked me to save "anything cool and dead" that we find in our yard.)
A neglected empty home, trespassing in the woods, and some broken glass. I know it doesn't sound glamorous. But I love to better understand this space we steward now. Instead of trampling on the history I want to at least understand the stories. We're planning to work with Ben to build a path from our house to camp, from which point we can walk under the bridge and up the river if we wish. Connecting the dots where one family once lived. With the occasional sharp reminders that none of us are saints, everyone dumps their trash, and there are huge transgressions in every season of history.
I hope we leave it better than we found it.
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