Tina Traster
The Archive
The time of my leaf
I have a picture I took 30 years ago of a white clapboard house partially obscured by brilliant, blazing leaves of autumn. The photo, which I framed and hung up...
Marvelous Milford
John Berendt, the author of “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” calls Milford, Pa., a “very surprising little town.” The bestselling writer elaborates: “The 19th-century period architecture is...
Shot heard ‘round the county
I Thought the constant whirring of helicopters at 7 a.m. on a Tuesday was a military fleet en route to West Point. But when the relentless droning drew me outside,...
Why Andes is worth a peek
My most vivid memories of being a camp counselor in the late 1970s are about nights out at the Andes Hotel in upstate Delaware County. The scene was a mix...
Living where the wild things are
Walking around Rockland Lake recently, I thought I’d taken a detour to the Galapagos. Several mature and magnificent herons and egrets were escorting a huge flock of young birds across...
Callicoon calling
What's been drawing Manhattanites -- and celebrities such as Mark Ruffalo and Debra Winger -- to Sullivan County’s tiny Callicoon, a hamlet of about 2,200 people located in the town...
Smell test
When I was young, three friends and I backpacked through Europe one summer. I don’t know who started the dare but someone wondered aloud, “How long could we go without...
Phoenicia rise
Phoenicia, a tiny Catskill Mountain hamlet set in a lush valley 120 miles northwest of Manhattan, has a frontier feel. This second-home rural outpost still has its rough edges despite...
Mill it over
The Village of Millbrook and its surroundings in the town of Washington, about 90 miles north of New York City in pastoral Dutchess County, is a study in contrasts. Its...
Home movie
I was just about to hit the spam button when I took a closer look at the e-mail subject line: “Location Scout for HBO.” I opened the e-mail and saw...
Powell trip in Catskills
Julie Powell’s life is one of those genuine Cinderella stories. The Julia Child-inspired cooking blog she wrote while working a mind-numbing government job turned into a best-selling book and then...
The up shot
Last summer, Jeffrey Millenbach, a New York City police officer, was holed up in his Hell’s Kitchen apartment with a knee injury. His sick policy, he says, required him to...
Time to spring ahead
There I am, still in my flannel bathrobe one late March morning, when I hear a thunderous hammering outside my window. My initial thought is someone is building a house,...
Not a big deal
McMansions are so yesterday. But don’t take our word for it. In the 2011 edition of the “Emerging Trends in Real Estate” report, co-published by the Urban Land Institute and...
Unsolved mysteries
Lately, I’ve been feeling like Jimmy Stewart in “Rear Window” — but in the suburbs. Why haven’t I seen the school bus stop next door? Why is there only one...
Feeling the freeze
Anyone who’s ever spent a winter week in Vermont or Canada’s Laurentian Mountains knows how easy it is to get swept up in the dreamy idyll of living in a...
The burb is the word
The recession has been good to those coveting a house in the suburbs. Take Michael Sellers, a 48-year-old communications executive who in 2005 bought a 1,000-square-foot starter home with his...
Miracle, grow
In the days leading up to Thanksgiving, we noticed one of our six hens was shrinking. Due to the “pecking order,” which is a brutal Darwinian reality, Miracle, our barred...
Leaves & bounds
Silly me for forgetting the second Sunday before Thanksgiving is a national holiday. National Leaf Blowing Day comes around every year — two weeks after Halloween and two weeks before...
A match for Patch
I looked twice before I realized it was a cat. Dumped and left for dead, at first he looked to me as if he might have been a raccoon. He...