Kristen Ann McLaughlin - A secluded life...

Easter Treasure Hunt

Creating an Easter Treasure Hunt has been an annual family tradition, one that began when our daughter Keri was a child and then continuing when her children were toddlers all the way to their teen years.

Now three of the children (including those two above, Zoe and Brendan) are living in faraway cities, leaving Emma and Soren to participate in the ritual without their older siblings. What happens is that their Papa gives them a first clue, which then leads to another and another until the treasure (their Easter baskets) is found. Each clue has to be pondered carefully. The following photos were taken from a treasure hunt the two went on some years ago (an added bonus is the physical workout)…

Snowstorm

Last week one of the biggest snowstorms we’ve seen here in New Hampshire descended on us with a fury.

A lot of snow was predicted, along with bitter temperatures and high winds, and the predictions weren’t wrong. One of the first things that concerns us with a pending storm is – will the power go out? We have a generator we bought in 1999, in preparation for a possible Y2K disaster. Having a generator is great, but there’s still a lot of tension along with it, such as: how long will a possible outage last and do we have enough propane if it lasts more than a few days?

Another addition

We started out building a toolshed, but that morphed into a cabin and then just kept on growing–with the addition of a storage shed, new wing, and a deck–until finally it became a real house.

After all that, our building funds were depleted. So for a few years we just worked on creating a garden–removing rocks and planting grass and perennials. Meanwhile, Buzz started drawing plans for a real living room and a big front porch.

Taking a gardening break from building…

Once the toolshed had turned into a cabin, and the cabin had turned into a house, we decided to keep it going. Over the next several years we would build if we had any money, and if we didn’t, we didn’t. During those “didn’t” years, we turned to gardening. Buzz built window boxes and we planted them with impatiens.

Phil, who’d done our driveway and septic, came back with his bulldozer and pulled out all the rocks in the yards that he could. What he couldn’t pull out, we gardened around, planting Shasta daisies, Black-eyed Susans, bright red Bee Balm, and about 25 different kinds of Day Lilies, along with big containers filled with colorful Wave Petunias.

The toolshed that turned into a cabin and kept on growing…

After the building of the toolshed (which had turned into a cabin) had been finished, we stained it Bluestone Gray, put in window boxes for spring planting, and came up whenever we could. Since Buzz didn’t teach Jan term or summer courses, and I could write from anywhere, we were in New Hampshire often, always working on the place, always busy with some project.

The next undertaking was to build a storage shed, since we couldn’t store anything in what we’d just built–it was now our little retreat house. Friends and family members often came up to help us.

Ora et Labora

God does indeed work in strange and mysterious ways.

When we were building what we thought was a toolshed and then became the core of our home, we were Protestants attending a Presbyterian church in New Jersey.

One Sunday our pastor gave a sermon in which he told the story of how he become lost one night while traveling and, feeling desperate, spotted a Benedictine monastery sign. Seeing a light still on, he turned into the monastery to ask for directions, but ended up–since hospitality is one of the pillars of Benedictine life–spending the night, enjoying conversation with the monks, and also admiring a sign proclaiming the Benedictine motto: “Ora et Labora,” prayer and work.

Building Thoreau’s Cabin

So we bought this book and, with help from friends and family, Buzz began building a large toolshed in which to store all the equipment we’d be needing to build our house.

The adventure begins…

We couldn’t get that big rock and that flat plateau out of our minds. What a perfect spot for a house. Maybe some day we could buy the land….

And then we found out from our neighbor, Nick Healy, who owned it: the lot was already under option. Oh well, we didn’t have money to buy it anyway, so why did this news make us feel so downhearted?

Months went by. Buzz’s father died, leaving us a small inheritance. “Dad would have loved us to buy that land,” Buzz said.

“Yes, but someone else is buying it.”

Mended Oar Outpost

This is a view of Mended Oar Outpost today–not exactly the way it looked during the 10 years when we rented it, since the land around it has been cleared and there’s been considerable renovation, both inside and out. But it does show the gorgeous location, complete with lily pads. And it’s still painted red.

(If you want to see what it looks like today, go here and scroll down to the bottom of the page. There are more photos here as well. It can be rented through Lakefalls: A Private Estate for Weddings & Retreats.)

Broken Oar Outpost

It was a dream come true–we had our own getaway in the New Hampshire woods. And all for only $150 a year. How could this be?

“You all have house karma,” a friend once told us. And apparently this was true; we had a great apartment in Greenwich Village and now a rustic wilderness retreat cottage. Or “camp,” as the New Hampshire natives called it.

Since the place had been built in the 1950s, used for awhile, and then abandoned, a few improvements had to be made before we could settle in. The exterior needed painting, so we chose a warm shade of red. There was no bathroom, so we built an outhouse and rigged up a port-a-potty for nighttime use. We hooked up the old propane refrigerator and stove.