A Short Walk in Montague
On the first anniversary of a profound move
We moved to Montague a year ago today. It was a radical thing to do. Okay, so we didn’t move somewhere where we couldn’t speak the language, nor did we enter the witness protection program. Nevertheless, the change we made was momentous. We did it with reckless speed—it took one month from first hearing about the house we bought to actually signing the closing documents. Prior to opening this chapter of our lives, we’d spent a grand total of about 5 hours in Montague, and that was 7 years ago!
I could trudge you through the whole year here, but that would be a chore for me and pretty dreary for you, so let’s just fast forward to a visit we had from old friends this past weekend because, as I think about it, it neatly encapsulates the spirit and reality of where we’ve landed.
Lisa and Nick are old friends from our NYC days; we’ve known them for almost thirty years. They fled the city for their own small town an hour west of here, and we don’t see them that much. Yesterday was the first time they came to visit. They’re zany and energetic and are taken to extravagant expressions of enthusiasm (which they usually actually live up to.)
They came for lunch yesterday, and were immediately taken by the cool renovation that we’ve done on the house, which was in a state of…well, let’s say it was complacently mature when we moved in. The renovation was epic, and we’re thrilled with how it came out. We had lunch, followed by a howl with Rosie, which Lisa recorded on her iPhone—the Rosie howl is becoming a tradition when we have visitors.
And then we went for a walk. We regaled our guests with descriptions of the people we’d met, the people who with remarkable rapidity have become our friends, our community. First, our next door neighbors Alice and Ted, on their funky and wonderful little homestead farm, replete with chickens, goats, honeybees and berry bushes, grapevines, fig trees…you name it. Ted’s a machinist (his workshop is directly adjacent to our property,) which got Nick going—”I’m going to contact him to make parts for my rocket...” Yes, Nick is planning to build his own rocket—one of those extravagant enthusiasms alluded to earlier.
Then there’s the redoubtable Marina, who lives diagonally across the road, my “pre-existing condition” (we’ve been friends for forty-five years, and once insanely hitched clear across the United States, all the way to Vancouver Island and back because we were young and incredibly stupid.) She’s the one who told me about the house. And, as of a few weeks ago, she’s “one third of the mayor” of Montague (we have a selectboard with three elected members who run the town.) Directly over the road we have Bruce and Julie, Bruce an accomplished historian and writer, Julie an activist and artist. They live with a twenty-nine year old novelist named Emily Blaisdell, who might or might not really exist (she’s actually a figment of Bruce’s imagination—he wrote a satirical time-travel book as her!) Next door to them, the Marianis, the old people on the street, Paul a renowned poet and scholar, Eileen a teacher and fierce activist (despite her exquisitely sweet nature.) And next door to them, Karen the editor and Barry the photographer, and…well, you get it. We have met a LOT of wonderful people in a very short time. It’s a beautiful thing!
As we walked, I set Nick up with a story about the next house we were going to pass, where my childhood hero Sam Lovejoy lives (Sam was the progenitor of the American anti-nuclear movement, in the mid-1970s.) I’ve written about Sam here if you’re interested to know more. As we rounded the curve to his house (which is a hundred yards from ours) who but the man himself should emerge from the rose bushes, a t-shirt with a large graphic of a crab stretched drum-tight over his now-expansive girth. Sam didn’t disappoint, regaling us with…oh, I forget, but in any event he was on form. Then, a scant minute or so after we bid Sam adieu, the lanky irreverence known as John Rae (“world renowned photographer”) swooped into the frame, performing elegant arabesques on his bicycle. John, also a pre-existing condition from college, gave us HIS spiel, and then dashed, a peloton of one, back to his house, a scant thirty yards away.
By now Nick and Lisa were starting to get it. It’s a small village, and it feels like everyone knows everyone else. But wait, there’s more…
We crossed the bridge high over the river, and crossed to the Bookmill, which is the “famous” place in town. A funky old bookstore with adjoining cafe and record store (there are a LOT of stores hawking vinyl in this part of the world.) The building it’s in was constructed the same year as our house, 1842. The river it attempts to dominate is quite dramatic, with long rock slabs sloping down so the entire thing is rapids. It’s a pretty unusual configuration, and it’s quite mesmerizing. Refreshed with ginger beers, we walked back up through town, once again seeing John who this time around was coquettishly peeking through the very white laundry hanging on the line in his driveway. He invited us in to take a look at the progress he was making on his portrait book (I DID mention that he’s a “world renowned photographer”, no?) At this point I thought our guests might be fatigued (asif!) if I schlepped them up North Street to inspect the dining room table that our friend Ben is coaching me through building (no doubt regretting the day he ever encouraged me to take this on.) We instead crossed the village green, where the singers were just wrapping up. The singers being an ad hoc group of locals who get together every day, that is EVERY SINGLE DAY, at 2pm, to sing. They sit in a ring and they sing for an hour. They’ve gone over a thousand days without missing a single one! One of them, Laurie, came over to say hi and gush about the newsletter that Duston puts out every week for Montague Resists.
Because yes, Montague has it’s own resistance movement, which started the day after the orange shitgibbon was reelected, and which has grown into a robust and rambunctious little mob. And of which Duston is one of the ringleaders!
By this time in the walk, Lisa and Nick, clearly having gotten it, began to talk about the fact that they’re looking to buy some land to build a house, somewhere near a river, so we hopped in the car and drove a short ways down the Connecticut where, apparently, there might be just such a plot for sale…
Arcadia, apparently, does still exist in America. I feel profoundly lucky to have found it.
Wow! What a walk. I don't believe a word of it, because no place could be this nice. But I guess it really is.
So happy you guys are here and adding to the freak factor. xo