A Lovely Spot

Benedict Park. Oil on stretched canvas

It's good to be back in Orange County. It's beautiful here, in a completely different way than where we live in Connecticut. It's wilder here, with mountains and fast rivers, lots of woods and a different kind of wind than you get near the ocean.

Our little house here is cool and shady in its riverside cathedral of trees. There has been some flooding - it rained nearly every day in June - but nothing catastrophic. The vegetation is undisturbed, the river sparkling and not too high, and if you didn't know there had been flooding, you'd never be able to tell.

I'm of such a mixed mind about our house here. Three potential sales have fallen through, and with each, I've felt sad, frustrated and angry - and also happy. It's nice to be able to stay here, with the sound of the river, and the tree frogs and the ducks and far-off coyotes. I know, too, that the market is going to recover at some point, and that that means a better price for our house.

But we owe money on it, and the taxes keep rising, and having the sales price in our bank account would make life so much easier.

So if you know anyone who would like a simple little house on a beautiful river, let me know. The first time a dry fly was cast in America, it was into the Neversink. There's still good fishing in our lovely river. There's great canoeing and rafting, and there's nothing more cooling on a steamy day than a swim in the clean water of the Neversink. There's wildlife year-round, wood ducks and mallards, egrets and herons, owls and hawks and eagles. There are fireflies and dragonflies and an army of hummingbirds.

Yes, the river floods from time to time, but on days like this, it seems a small price to pay for such wealth.