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| A perfect vantage point | ||||
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| A misty morning | ||||
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The fading afternoon sun |
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| And a final blaze of glory |
Memoirs - Jim and Margareta - the Wonderful House on The Lake
(preliminary)
I met Jim (White) and subsequently his wife Margareta early on when I moved to Boston. I tried to get into the hostelling scene there, but didn't care a lot for the council and the people on those trips. And although I did do some regular trip leading, the best thing that happened was meeting Jim and Margareta.
At first we did a lot of biking together, as a private group. This is covered in the Cycling chapter. However, eventually, I became such close friends with them they became my true extended family in Boston. I spent innumerable hours hanging out with them (and their children) at their home in Brookline - essentially in, but officially not a part of Boston. But they also had this wonderful house - just a few hundred feet from the shore of Lake Winnipesauke, New Hampshire - one of the most beautiful, and probably also the largest lake in New Hampshire.
Actually, though, when I met them, I'm not sure if they even had the house yet. The reason I say this is because I spent numerous weekends with them building it! Well, they did not build it from the ground up, they had the foundation and the outside constructed by a firm that sold "house kits" basically the whole outside and main structure inside, but not at all finished inside. So for a few years we made regular pilgrimages every weekend to finish the inside of this beautiful country home. And it was paradise.
And while today this property is probably worth a kings ransom, Jim's mom (and dad) bought the property when, I guess, it was considered so "way up in the woods" - an ordinary working person could then afford it. They bought several acres of lakefront land and built their own summer home there. And although Jim's father had passed on before I met him, his mother was alive and well for many years.
So Jim's mom lived in their original home, a nice log house directly on the lake (as opposed to Jim's place - set back a few hundred feet - but with a full view of the lake from the deck). Fortunately the acreage had enough land to allow one more house to be built on it, a decent distance from, but just down the trail from the original house.
This house was Margareta's dream house, and since she is originally a Swede, she loved finely finished wood (pine) for the inside (as did I). All the walls are knotty pine which we lovingly sanded and covered with clear urethane. Of course it has a beautiful stone fireplace and a spacious kitchen.
Outside and down to the lake was the "dock" actually a stone pier with a wood deck on it. Jim wasn't into power boating but was, as you will read in the sailing chapter, a sailor. So he has a neat small wood sailboat we could sail around the bay. Note that Lake Winnipesauke is large enough (I think five miles across at the center and perhaps 30 miles long) to require substantial craft to go out on. The house was actually situated on a bay, which itself was a sizeable body of water but on which there were not sea height waves on a windy day. Our water activities therefore were wholly on and around their bay. I think it was called Melvin Bay, and the nearby small town was Melvin Village.
Next to the dock Jim had made a very small beach by purchasing and having sand deposited, so to swim you could not only jump in off the dock, (at the deep end), you could go in via the tiny sand beach along side. Of course this made sense since when we started going there, the children, Erik and Soonie, were still just little kids. So they needed a little beach too.
Unfortunately I don't have any photos of the beautiful inside, but check below fo photos I have of the outside and of the view. Also note that in the photo all you see of the house is the main floor / loft. However the house is actually two floors with the loft above the main floor and with bedrooms below the main floor behind the small trees just reaching the bottom of the deck. This house is very beautiful.
Eventually, since I became very close to the family I was given permission to use the house on my own, if I wanted to, and I often did, I stayed as long as a week - by myself. This was wonderful when I badly needed a getaway (to a private paradise no less). How fortunate I was!
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Winter at the House
This was not just a summer retreat. We also went there in the winter.
Skiing
At the beginning the local road (which was private and led to just a few lake homes) was not plowed out. And since Jim and Margareta were the only people who were into winter weekend sports, those early years meant we skied in! That was when I learned how to cross country ski! We actually loaded a sled (a Norse sled that Margareta pulled) as well as back packs to bring in our supplies. This was Scandinavia in New Hampshire. It was wonderful.
Skating
I was a lousy cross country skier but quite a good ice skater. And although only rarely was the lake not snow covered, occasionally it would freeze clear and we would get there before the next snow. There was no problem with safety if you wanted to skate on the lake. In that area the ice was 18 inches thick! You can easily drive a truck on that kind of ice. We knew how thick it was because there were ice fisherman out there in little huts, so we would stop and ask them how deep they had to drill to reach the water.
One time the whole bay was frozen smooth. This was skating paradise. One of the few times ever I could skate as far as my legs would carry my. I skated miles - clear to the far shore (of the bay) and all around. Another kind of paradise! Unfortunately since we only came when time allowed skating opportunities were few and far between. However that meant another option was usually available.
Lake Skiing
Sometimes, when you could not skate, you could ski on the lake. Snow might be ten or fifteen inches deep which meant drifts were small hills. What a wonderful memory. How lucky I was. While Kauneonga Lake was great, this was something else. It was heaven.
