New Hampshire life - Kristen Ann McLaughlin

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.

How we got here, part 2

Late in the summer of 1980 we drove up from our Jane Street apartment in Greenwich Village, New York City, for a week’s stay at an Adirondack lodge located deep in the wilderness of southwestern New Hampshire.

Today an upscale wedding venue , the lodge then rented weekly for $150 and featured an enormous great room with an imposing, walk-in stone fireplace, vaulted beamed ceiling, and arched, floor to ceiling clerestory window overlooking a small private pond with its own waterfall. At that time there were several small, simply furnished bedrooms and a functional kitchen, but the setting was–and still is–spectacular. Getting to the lodge involved driving carefully over a winding, rutted gravel road lined on either side by thick woods, but once there, we felt like we’d arrived in paradise.

How we got here

We were living in New York City in the West Village, on Jane Street. Actually in the top floor of an historic brownstone where Alexander Hamilton died after his fatal duel with Aaron Burr. There was a plaque to this effect on the outside of the building until “Hamilton” became the Broadway rage and the owners took it down. But we lived there many years before that time, when our rent for a 4th floor, 2-bedroom Greenwich Village walkup was $700 a month, not $10,000 as that particular apartment rents for now.

Monastic living

It’s just the two of us, me and Buzz, in our own private monastery.

The daily routine is simple and rhythmic: wake between 5 and 6, have coffee in bed together for an hour or so, talking through possibilities in the coming day or family issues or whatever is going on in the world.

Then he goes down to the studio to feed the cat and do his hour-long exercise while I shower, dress, make the bed, do my own exercise, and pray through The Magnificat.