September 2020 — Beacon, New York
Reverse out of the gravel parking spot at your friend’s farmhouse in Charlotte, Vermont. Crawl to the road then juice the gas before a vehicle blocks you. You are leaving behind a hamlet overlooking Lake Champlain and beyond that glistening slab of water, the dark grey Adirondack Mountains as bearded and pointy-hatted and profoundly old as Tolkien wizards.
Charlotte is the most gorgeous place you’ve ever lived. With your friend and his family you’re in a home full of love and coffee and children and adults who want your opinions about politics and art and his wife who sings idly to herself and then her daughter harmonizes and it’s like baking. Ingredients and heat transform the house into something alchemic and rising.
But you love your independence. You want your home. The magic is tantalizing and safe, perhaps you can learn to cast spells too.
Where is home? It’s on the tip of your tongue. It’s at the edge of the medieval map with the monsters and imagination. If you were in Act One of a musical you’re the star belting, “Where am I? Where is home? How do I get there?” Since you’re a man in a car and you can’t carry a tune, you press the pedal and take a left to Ferry Road.
Now make a hard southbound right onto Route 7. Over the next two hours go south and west to Interstate 87, the highway that draws a line from Montreal to New York City.
For six hours forge roads flooded high with Labor Day traffic. Cross a rusty and potholed bridge over the Hudson River. Arrive at a small town of around 15,000 people on its eastern banks. Beacon rises from the riverbanks at the 60 mile mark north from the Upper Bay of New York Harbor, the mouth of the river, right at Battery Park in lower Manhattan.
The Beacon that beckons has brought you here. Is it the home, or just a light on the shoals?
You park and unpack and soon walk into the Main Street to get your body moving after a day of sitting. If you’re from New England you recognize this town like it’s an elementary school buddy who’s gone grey and slack with age.
Antebellum brick industrial buildings line a creek that cuts through town. There are falls and fast water. There’s no sign of a wheel but the warehouses and factories are still here, now glammed up as expensive lofts or office spaces. Mostly what you see are blocks and blocks of small two-story houses with vinyl or wood siding, some decrepit, some freshly painted, most in the middle. It’s a mill town, abandoned by money for over a hundred years, now clinging to craft beer and an art museum like a person in deep water, holding onto buoys.
Beacon is not as apocalyptic and urban as Hudson NY, where you were last month. Hudson has row houses and no trees; the streets are like a mouth full of broken and stained teeth with a few gleaming exceptions. Beacon is not as distorted as Hudson either. Hudson has high end, expensive boutique hotels across from crumbling homes. Million dollar brownstone stand around the corner from boarded-over buildings and broken cars.
Beacon is modest and tucked in. All of the houses are small. There is no removed, wealthy neighborhood with its correspondingly huge impoverished swath. Things are pleasantly even; what might be called middle income mixed with blue collar. Think Normal Rockwell with a PBR and pickup.
You are stalking the time like a romantic hunter. You’re a nomad, a pilgrim, whatever metaphor you want. You’re alone and you’re seeking something that exists in the space between intangibility and square footage. Home.
What you find is a small town boundaried by the Hudson River and a low but beautiful, thickly wooded ridge called the Hudson Highlands. Think verdant, steep hills. The tallest peak is Mount Beacon, where people once lit signal fires. Steel antennae towers now blink red at night.
You set up your new apartment, it’s next to a used car dealership and a discount tire center. The bedroom faces a busy road. None of these were clear from the Airbnb listing. You’ve grown used to online bait and switches. Comfort isn’t your mission. You’re not on vacation. You’re here to think and feel and imagine.
It’s hard to stalk prey when you’re hungry and the pickings are slim. Beacon has small housing plots — 0.1 acres. This means houses under 2,000 square feet with yards too small for wiffle ball and… that’s it. It’s cute and small townish and prices are rising fast. Neighbors are close so people say hello. Streets are clean. Cars don’t use their horns.
You work in the mornings and then take long walks as your think about lunch. Google Maps doesn’t tell you which restaurants have outdoor dining, so it’s all look and see. Works fine in good weather.
There is a synagogue but the rabbi won’t open for outdoor services and he’s too busy preparing for the High Holidays, the chagim, to see you. You know no one. Friends don’t bump into you. You only talk to people you give money to: for food, for groceries, for a house as you see few listings with a broker. The prices are higher than they’ve ever been. The houses are smaller than you’d ever want but you can make it work, it’s more than fine. The broker, a mother with a smiling face behind her mask, hints that it’s better to wait.
If hunting is a metaphor, the herd has scattered and you can handle the wait. So now you go south and east, to Brooklyn.