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okay house, bad site; big ugly house, great site
Sunday, August 2 2015
location: southeast shore, Twenty Ninth Pond, remote Minerva Township, Essex County, New York
We'd spread out all over the cabin but this morning we had to consolidate, pack, and load stuff back into our Subaru. We had an unusually early checkout hour of 10am (no exceptions), though this wasn't as bad as it would have been in our regular life; something about the lake and the lack of communication and streaming media meant that we had become better synchronized to the rhythms of nature, rising earlier in the morning and going to bed earlier at night. And, for me at least, the process of packing and loading was greatly simplified by Gretchen's organized nature. She is the least-procrastinatory person I have ever met. Last night she had packed up most of the bedroom and crated her reading materials, organizing it into staging areas for quick removal to the car. I focused more on issues of cleanliness, sweeping all the pine needles from the living room floor and front porch, washing the dishes and kitchen surfaces, and even cleaning the refrigerator. We left the cabin so spotless that there will be little for the owner to do. I also left a bottle of habañero hot sauce in the refrigerator so it will be there for me if we ever come back (and I can see how popular it was when I do). Unlike all the other cabins we've stayed in, this one was good enough to return to next year, assuming we don't buy our own lake cabin first.
As we drove out to 28N on the drivway, I took it slowly and cautiously, somehow avoiding any serious bangs in the undercarriage. It was so nice to reach asphalt again. Driving on it felt like spreading butter on toast.
The other day I'd discovered that the clip-on connector to the Subaru's alternator was indeed loose, so I'd clicked it on securely and hoped the scary blinking of dashboard lights wouldn't plague us on our drive back southward. That seemed to do the trick; no blinking happened at all today.
As usually happens, Gretchen had set up appointments with a realtor so we could check out lake cabins for sale in the southern Adirondacks. The Twenty Ninth Pond is sort of in the east-central Adirondacks, so to get to where our realtor and her prospective properties were, we had to drive diagonally southwestward on smallish roads (particularly Routes 8 and 30) through countryside that I expected to be a bit more beautiful than it actually turned out to be.
For some reason Gretchen thought we were driving to Peck Lake (the next lake west of our favorite lake, Lake Edward). But that made the Google maps instructions seem all wrong. How could our destination only be ten minutes away when we were just now within sight of Great Sacandaga Lake (eight and a half miles east of Peck Lake)? Evidently Gretchen hadn't zoomed out on the directions and seen that our destination was actually on Great Sacandaga itself. Once we'd cleared that up, we had some time to kill, so we stopped for a dog walk and a picnic at Mayfield High School, which features ample grounds in the back. (On Sundays, schools can be the best choices for use as emergency off-leash dog parks.) After walking the dogs, we sat at the line where shade met sun (43.104160N, 74.260773W) and made sandwiches from leftover veggie burgers and portobello caps from last night's barbecue (as well as other things salvaged from our cabin). On the drive back out to the road, we saw a faint graffito on the gabled roof of one of the school's utility buildings (43.103757N, 74.260843W). It read "95 RULES." I'm sure they did; that bit of property damage is now at least 20 years old.
We could tell right away that the $230,000 house we'd come to see (43.091036N, 74.240586W) was unsuitable. Aside from its dreary interior, the house itself wasn't that bad, but it was wedged too tightly between neighboring houses and its lake access was a narrow channel full of anchored boats and the sound of lake-recreating humans. Though the vastness of Great Sacandaga opened up from there, with gorgeous views of mountains to the northeast, this was not our idea of a place to relax on a lake (particularly given the way we'd spent the last week). The realtor showed up a few minutes after we arrived, and she was the first other person we'd talked to in nearly seven whole days. She was a tall woman with a Minnesota accent, which, in the aftermath of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, might have made her seem less intelligent than we would have otherwise thought her. Having already decided not to bother going inside this place on Great Sacandaga, we had the realtor try to arrange a viewing of a house on Peck Lake, though so far she wasn't having any luck reaching the occupants. With that still up in the air, we headed off to our favorite lake, Lake Edward, to check out an ugly raised ranch that looked to be on a perfect lot.
It turns out that Lake Edward isn't all that far from Great Sacandaga; they're both in the greater Gloversville area. But to get from one to the other, one has to go south (perhaps off the Adirondack escarpment; there is one in the south), then either east or west, and then north. Once at Lake Edward, it's a little like being home; we've spent more time there than anywhere else Upstate except Ulster County. As for the house (43.120300N, 74.362990W), it was just a couple lots northeast of Gust's cabin, where we stayed in the Summer of 2013, and can probably access his WiFi network. It's a decidedly ugly house: a monstrous raised ranch with vinyl siding and no windows on its northeast or southwest gabled ends, indicating it had been assembled in large pieces that were bolted together on site. Indeed, once inside, it has the look and feel of a double-wide trailer, with decor and finishing decisions suggesting they'd been overseen by a 60-something white Republican with an associate degree in retail management. Despite the presence of a gorgeous lake with no visible signs of humanity beyond the dock, the house seemed to have been built and arranged without any awareness of the lake whatsoever. For example, the windows facing the lake were no larger than those facing the street, and, despite near-perfect weather conditions, all the windows were closed. If it weren't for all the loon tchotchkes, one would think the occupants had no particular interest in the lake at all.
In addition to the ugliness and indifference to the lake, another problem with this house was its vast size. Upstairs it had two bathrooms and three bedrooms (in addition to everything else). But then downstairs was a whole additional 800 square feet of space that included a fourth bedroom and a walk-in closet that could serve as a bedroom as well, as well as a large rumpus room (what else would one call it). And beyond that was a huge unfinished section of basement and then, beyond a door, a second section of unfinished beasement beneath the concrete slab of the garage (kept aloft by huge steel ibeams). Everything was in perfect shape, including the wiring. I had never seen such an æsthetically-pleasing deployment of yellow Romex in my life.
The house sat on 0.44 acre lot, and the evergreen growth on either side was was sufficient to almost completely block views of other neighbors. Instead what one saw in the yard was Lake Edward at its widest spot (over a quarter of a mile). There is nothing but wilderness on the distant shore, and nearer by on the lake is the archipelago of low islands where the loons come to nest. Though small, it is one of the best lots on the entire lake. Of course, having been cleared and developed by people with no empathy for nature or sense for how human artifacts should integrate with the natura world, the lot has its problems. It had been completely cleared of all existing trees when the house was built 12 years ago, and since then a number of spindly non-native ornamentals kaplunked here and there without any particular sense of how they would improve the environment. If one were to lift them up and carry them through space to some other lower-middle-class American exurb, the house and yard wouldn't look the least bit out of place. The asking price for this house and lot is $300,000, though most of that is for the ugly house. It's a shame that it can't have some funky cabin on it instead and be $100,000 cheaper. Still, the site was so good that neither Gretchen and I could immediately rule it out as a potential lake house. The question was: could we find a use for all that house? And could we do anything to improve it æsthetically? If we could make it beautiful and rent it out for most of every summer, we could probably cover the increased expenses of maintenance, fuel, and mortgage.
With these thoughts in mind, we convoyed over to Peck Lake, which is close to Lake Edward as a crow flies but not by car. We had to go south off the Adirondack escarpment, west on West Bush Road, and then north up onto the escarpment again. We stopped along the way in a place where our realtor could get a cell signal, but when she learned she'd failed to arrange an appointment with a landowner for a tour of a Peck Lake property, we proceeded on without her, hoping to do a "drive by" on our own.
Peck Lake is much larger than Lake Edward and we'd never been to it before. We approached it from the south, past a series of camper-rich camp ground. Beyond that, the houses all looked much fancier than anything we'd seen on Lake Edward. They were also better integrated with their lots. There were no modular houses or vinyl siding in evidence; instead what one saw were glimmering modern houses full of big floor-to-ceiling windows and rakishly whimsical roof angles. Oddly, a good fraction of the houses on South Shore Road appeared to be for sale, though why had none of these come up when Gretchen had been poking around on Zillow? Though beautiful, most of the houses didn't meet our criteria; they tended to be a bit too close together or have various problems with their shore access. We stopped in a few places so Gretchen could look at the houses (especially the one we'd come to see, which, since nobody appeared to be there, we briefly toured). After taking a free handout, Gretchen realized why these houses hadn't come up on Zillow. They were all $500,000! We'd come to fancytown, and yet nothing here was anywhere near as appealing as that ugly raise ranch of Lake Edward. [Later Gretchen would learn that the homeowners' association of Peck Lake do their utmost to keep the lake from becoming yet another white trash lake (like, let's face it, Lake Edward). If we were to buy a cabin on Peck Lake, we would probably get in trouble for our dogs if nothing else.]
From Peck Lake, we drove south to Johnstown and then drove back to Albany on I-90. As always, we stopped in the commercial clusterfuck of Colonie (just north of Albany) to do more shopping at Whole Foods and then to buy two carts' worth of groceries at Trader Joe's. I think we blew another $150 at the former and only about $300 at the latter, though it was enough to trigger the credit card fraud algorithm at my credit card provider. You would think by now that algorithm would be aware that when the card hasn't been used in a week and then suddenly gets used to buy $300 worth of groceries in Albany, it just means we're returning home from the Adirondacks.
Back at our house in Hurley, most of the sunflowers were in full bloom. There was even a poppy pod atop grey-green plant that had grown up from a seed that had come in one of the festive seed packets Michelle V. had given to attendees at her 2013 wedding as a party favor. Our housesitter Aspen was there when we arrived. From all appearances, she'd run our house with the responsibility, competence, and good luck that doesn't usually attend our housesitters. She'd had a quiet, relaxing time, and had gone on a few minor adventures (such as to the Trader Joe's in Colonie; it hadn't seemed far away from her Mountain Timezone perspective). After helping us unload our car, she drove off to her next destination, somewhere in Massachusetts.
Evidently there had been rain while we'd been gone, which meant good things for the garden. I went around watering particular plants just in case and was delighted to find that the head net I'd put on as a precaution was no longer necessary; the boom of mosquitoes was evidently over.
I number of things had arrived in the mail, including a replacement bridge rectifier for the 120volt Greenworks Lawnmower. It only took me a minute or so to confirm that the rectifier was going to make my lawnmower work once more. That was a cheap fix. Unfortunately, though, the refurbished Chromebook we'd bought for one of Gretchen's recently-released former prisoner-students was on the fritz again and the former student had mailed it back. I opened it up and monkeyed with the SATA cable, but couldn't get the damn thing to work. It seems that what they say about Acorn computer equipment is true.
Later, as evening descended, I heard the foreboding cha-cha-cha-cha of katydids for the first time this summer. Back-to-school advertisements can't be far away now!
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