Escaping into Middle America

Thursday, August 13th


It's the first night of our writing retreat.

We are in the Adirondacks, in Piseco, at the Irondequoit Inn.

At first, the place is a bit of a disappointment. On the website the rooms looked more well cared for, the landscaping more spacious, the beach more secluded, and the parking lot and tennis court right next to the building had not been completely visible at all. Yes, the view is utterly beautiful, and yes, the inn has historic charm... BUT... there are a LOT of little buts... and I watched how each of us got tangled up in several of them.

On arrival we ran into a group of people sitting on the front porch celebrating happy hour with drinks, pretzel sticks and potato chips. Friendly as they were, something repelled me, was it that they talked a little too loudly with alcohol infused voices? Was it that they acted a bit too much like they owned the place? Was it that their way of communicating was long winded in an irritatingly impersonal way? While waiting for the Innkeeper to appear we soon learned that all of them have been coming here from their respective home towns around New York City for years, every summer...

Next Jimmy found the smell in the house objectionable... it reminded him of a gas odor... while I though it merely an old house smell. The room was quite too bare for his taste, and the colors too muted. The interior a bit too run down.

Then the seats in the sitting room downstairs looked pretty worn out... when I tested one of the cushions, I could feel the wooden structure underneath my butt, and I started wondering whether there would be be a comfortable enough seat anywhere in this inn where I could be sitting for long stretches of time in order to write...

Walking down the little trail downhill to visit the beach, we passed four cabins. They were built, even though mostly out of sight, right smack below the inn, each with view of the water... walking past them I felt all of a sudden like we were going through other peoples front yard, all of a sudden the remote beauty of the lake below the inn was inundated with various large groups of unexpected strangers, who had spilled out of their small windowed brown cabins, complete with barbeque smoke and beach towels spread out to dry... maybe worst of all too many car tires had violated the soft ground and had turned it into an unkempt dirt road which cut through the natural grass area in front of the beach. What I had imagined as an uninterrupted flow of lovingly tended nature from the steps of the inn all the way down to the beach didn't exist.

I had pictured myself walking down to the lake to go for a swim at night before going out for dinner, but now that somehow didn't feel inviting any longer.

Our boisterous new friends had informed us of the dining options and discouraged us from visiting the Ox Bow Inn, which Chad, the owner, had recommended as a place with good and inexpensive food, a place where one can get "all that good stuff". All of a sudden I remembered he had used the same phrase on the phone when I had asked him what they serve for breakfast, and he had said: Oh... eggs and omlets and waffles and pancakes and "all that good stuff". Curious little phrase. And what was it again he said when he showed us our room? Pointing at the small stack of white towels: These are your towels, we give you fresh ones every day and "all that good stuff". Hmm... Anyway, the good stuff he alluded to at the Ox Bow Inn didn't sound all that good from their experience and they directed us toward the Speculator Inn for better dining. There were other choices too, but how they distinguished themselves had been lost in the longish drawl of the advice. One place served tex mex... Jimmy liked that. We thought it was the Inn.

The first thing I noticed when we entered, was a worn out dark wall to wall green carpet which in the path of the entrance had been reduced to it's gray backing. A fleeting thought crossed my mind: don't ever eat in a restaurant with a dirty old carpet... but I ignored that warning. The walls above the paneling were dark green too. So were the blinds, half of which were drawn... and... below the ceiling... yes, there were last winters season decorations: plastic pine garlands entwined with christmas lights...

When we took a look at the menu it was clear this was NOT the tex mex restaurant. Jimmy made a feeble attempt to talk me into leaving, but didn't pull me out of my hesitation. My hesitation in turn didn't stem form wanting to be here, but from a purely strategic worry: if this was indeed the best place in town and we now left for the other restaurant and it was even worse, and we wanted to come back here, then it could be embarrassing, more embarrassing even than leaving now.

So we stayed, and we regretted it.

I realized something. I realized how spoiled we are. How much we take good eating for granted. I had forgotten how unsettling it is not to be able to eat at least good, nourishing, fresh, simple food. The outlook onto three days of malnourishment, of carelessly, uninspiredly prepared meals began to seriously depress us. It didn't help that the waitress was just as unengaging as the food she brought us. The one and only highlight was a truly wonderful homemade blueberry pie Jimmy needed to order to bring himself back to life after chewing through the awful meatloaf with ungracious amounts of mystery gravy, and the glob of watery mashed potatoes.

On the way home we checked out the other restaurants and concluded that we must have indeed ended up in the worst place of them all. Even the ominous Ox Bow Inn looked cheery with its red and white checkered curtains and its sun washed wood paneling. Looking forward to a peaceful night in our little old fashioned room, we found the sitting room of our Inn occupied by the same group of people, still with glasses in their hands... had they been drinking all night long? I was surprised by my own judgement when I noticed that they actually annoyed me, even ever so slightly. What was it about drinking I objected to?

We could still dimly hear their voices upstairs in our room. After the first five paragraphs of writing I ran out of battery juice for my computer, and discovered that the electrical outlets in our room had never been upgraded to the three prong plug. Wondering if that might be enough reason to leave the Inn the next day I laid down to sleep. Jimmy was already twitching in his dreams next to me. The bedframe is a bit screechy, but the mattress nice and soft, the pillows a bit too thick and puffy, but the sound of the summer crickets and the soft gurgle of a mountain stream made up for it with it's sweet lullaby.

We woke up to a white fog shrouding the trees outside our window and footsteps and vigorous voices coming up from the porch. The shared bathroom is cute enough and only steps down the hallway, but ran out of water as soon as I wanted to brush my teeth in the morning. The omlet I had ordered with a choice of tomatoes, scallions, mushrooms and cheddar cheese, featured the tomatoes and mushrooms in their canned version, the orange juice of course was not fresh either, not even make belief fresh with pulp, but at least they had some herb teas.

But right now... all woes are washed aside.

Now I am sitting with my labtop on one of the brightly painted green chairs on the front porch. The flowered pillows provide just enough cushioning beneath me, Chad has given us some very "good stuff": a plug adapter and an extension cord, feeding my computer with new energy, I have just enough shade to be able to see the screen clearly and I have this enchanted view in front of me: over the lawn to the right down to the silvery water, the sparkling treetops straight ahead just low enough to see the mountains at the horizon in their blue silhouettes... the sky is filled with a boundlessness of white fluffy clouds, the warm breeze plays a soft music with two little chimes, some human voices wafting up from the beach now and then, some teenage boys are playing tennis on the court all the way over to the right, and our friends from yesterday, who at times seem to gravitate annoyingly to all the same places we want to be in, have finally left this part of the porch.

Half an hour later, after reading some e-mails, the weather has changed, the breeze has turned into chilly gusts and rain is falling out of the sky.

Oh, how fragile, our little thin zones of comfort. How hard we work to match something around us that makes us feel GOOD. That makes us feel safe... and at home... and healthy. How many nuances there are that we think we need to reject in order to feel that we have been true to ourselves.

Now it's beginning to pour, and people are coming back from everywhere to find shelter under the roof of the Inn. We had considered taking the double kayak out onto the lake to paddle to the little island... now I am glad writing took up more time and we stayed in.

Somehow it seems we needed to leave the comfort of our home in Old Chatham, the almost prefect way in which it fits our lives, and surrounds us with comfort, in order to encounter the different needs and habits of middle Americans escaping from their daily life, enmeshing themselves into this timeless idyllic land, this eternally beautiful spot of nature. If that is so, we are in the right place after all.