A visit to Edgewater Farm

The ghost of Don Cote ... and my own ghosts too... came out amidst the old barn smells of varnish and wood, and the sawdust well-settled from years of sculpting.
An old saddle still perches where Don and I looked it over and decided it was a child's saddle.
It hasn't moved and I didn't touch it. I saw a horse sculpture, not too bad, though most of the rest was little experimental pieces, or things Don started but never finished, sketches done in wood to prepare him for his greater works. I wanted to have the running horse, which is copied from the windvanes that came from a particular 19th Century Morgan Horse. But I thought even to move the dust would be a crime. It looks like Don's old building south of his own may fall into the river this year, but the house he labored on with his team of workers is still there, still perching strongly. Some of the deck may no longer be safe, but we don't want to go there do we? All of us at one time, listening to the creek, and enjoying Don's company and today seems as near to me as that .... I could relive those days on the sun-drenched deck, but I'll
leave some memories undisturbed. I don't want a new experience to overlay the old one. I'm on tiptoe here, sorting through sweet days past. The new owners have used the barn for their own collectibles and the barn has a new coat of paint. The little building on the hill near the entrance has been rebuilt as a kind of showpiece. Dexter's pasture still remains and the grass grows taller there yet, from years of manure and hayseed. This rather surprised me, that manure could still improve the grass 7 years on. Here and there dotting the property, Don's little greek columns and shrines, mysterious rock piles, and an old fence with a rusty lock, guarding what what was once his cash crop. Fenceposts standing in mute testimony.... a bare patch in the driveway and an oil stain where the blue truck has only recently been removed ... removed from the exact spot where Don last drove it. With Don dying so suddenly in 2001, and the property only sparingly used, there is a perfect time-capsule to open and muse on, to feel timeless penumbras flitting elegantly through the early mist, while the ancient river turns its glacial tills and slowly polishes another rock.

pvs