Willimantic, Now & Then
One thing that amused our neighbors was that our platform was next to a large Maple tree that had an electrical box fixed to the side of it. This box had a dozen or so outlets, which were is very short supply when the season got going. We were warned to claim ours and prepare to defend the claim, but we never had anything to plug in.
This campground was pretty much deserted when we arrived in April. As newcomers we had no idea what the scene would be like a couple of months! By the beginning of July, when the show opened, every square foot of space was occupied.
I have these lovely memories dancing in my head right now. Like chopping vegetables in our kitchen and having a robin fly right in front of my face, taking a shortcut from on side of the platform to the other. That really tickled me, having a bird fly through my kitchen.
Once, when I was napping on the platform, I awoke to look into the eyes of a 7-foot black rat snake that had raised its head to peer onto the platform. Another time, a brown shape caught my eye in the ferns along the little stream that ran next to our campsite. When I investigated, I found a spotted fawn curled next to a rock. Its mom was grazing in the little meadow on the hill.
When the dust settled, we had moved into a campground that looked a little like a junkyard in the middle of paradise. Beautiful mountains, lakes and forests surrounded it. The flora and fauna were gorgeous! It was nonetheless, a junkyard. Rusting busses, camper trailers crushed from last winter snows, piles of rotting lumber and other discarded building materials.
As you might imagine, it took a little adjustment from our Lower Eastside apartment to living on a platform in the woods. Actually, it took us a while to find the platform. We spent a few nights, huddled in our leaking, soggy tent in the mud. The staff soon found us an unoccupied platform, but we still hadn’t figured out the finer points of this life.
Summer Adventure is First Step into Tomorrow
I want to tell you a little story. Got a minute?
It’s a rainy day story. This is a rainy Monday, and I am thinking about other rainy days, spent under a tarp, in the woods of upstate New York. It’s a story about living a little closer to nature, which, I am reminded on this rainy Monday, also means closer to the rain – damp, cold rain.
This story starts in Manhattan. It started in Chelsea, on West 27th Street, to be exact. That’s where Sarah saw the intriguing job advertisement that ultimately led us into the woods and the rain.
The job ad was for costumers at a summer theater production. It said enjoyment of camping was a plus. Sarah had been teaching costuming at Barnard College. We had been making clothes for our own business for a while, just getting started. And we love to camp.
We responded, and after some back and forth, we embarked on an adventure that changed our life. One of the changes – and this is what I’m really thinking about right now – is that I will never again think of all the modern conveniences as essential for me to live.
By Mark Svetz
We had to hitch a ride to the spring for water every couple of weeks. This was the one way in which we were not independent, since we had no car for most of that first year.
We spent three summers at that job, camping from April to October. The first year we borrowed a friend’s car to start out the experience. We found, however, that we really didn’t need it, so when we gave it back, we didn’t worry about a car until the last year, when we were making plans to move out of Manhattan permanently. At that point we were looking for a van anyway, so it just worked out that way.
Our “commute” to the costume shop involved a pleasant walk through the grounds of the Fair, which had once been the New York Botanical Garden and still had many flowering plants and trees to liven our days. The walk to the shop, for instance, was through a grove of trees with beautiful white flowers. I think they were some kind of Asian dogwood. They gave our walk the feeling of a fantasy.
Our new platform had a nice place for our backpacking tent on one end. This would serve as our “bedroom.” The rest was open to the fresh air, but eventually covered with a very large tarp, which we stretched between the trees. This set-up, which the campground elders later told us was the “tarp over everything method,” let us stay relatively dry even in the pouring rain.
Our little tent, which was just large enough for an old futon, made a really sweet little sleeping place. It was mostly free of bugs and fairly dry in most weather.
We had a nifty kitchen set up with a bookshelf for our dishes and other supplies, and a nice old table for a prep counter. It was so pleasant to make our evening meal with the late day sun filtering through the trees as a backdrop.
With our small fire pit, located just off the platform, we could boil water with sticks gathered right around us. It only took a few minutes, even to make a light meal, like rice and a stir-fry.
We made weekly bicycle trips to Monroe, NY, for groceries. It was about a 6- or 7-mile ride. Part of the ride was on a winding road, which was teeming with white-tailed deer at the right time of the day. The old-timers referred to the early evening hours as “deer-thirty.”
We would ride home, our bikes loaded with supplies for the week ahead. These included a lot of fresh vegetables for the first few days, and then potatoes, squash, plantains, and other less perishable food for later in the week. These kept better in the absence of refrigeration.
State Forests, lakes, hiking trails, including the Appalachian Trail, surrounded our little junkyard in paradise. We occasionally rode our bikes to Bear Mountain, with the scenic wonderland all around it.
And all of this was less that an hour away from our home in Manhattan. We occasionally traveled back and forth by train. We’d ride our bikes down out of the hills, on forest trails, to Tuxedo Park, NY, where we got on the New Jersey Transit train to Hoboken. From there it was a few minutes by PATH Train to W. 8th Street, and then a 15-minute walk home to E. 2nd Street.
We worked that job for three straight summers. We worked hard and developed a thirst for living closer to nature. We didn’t know it when we signed on, but the job was ultimately a bridge for us out of Manhattan, leading us back here to Willimantic in it’s own good time.
We’ve all heard the longest journey begins with a single step. Sometimes, when we take that first step, we have no idea where subsequent steps will take us.
Mark Svetz and Sarah Winter own Clothworks, a shop on Church Street in Downtown Willimantic, where they make and sell clothing and bags. They still dream, from time to time, about living on a platform in the woods.
WILLIMANTIC –March, 2008
HELP WANTED
STEP THIS WAY
I also remember walking through the woods to a beautiful lake, where we would swim on hot summer days. It was a fairly long walk, so we had many quiet conversations, watching for deer in the forest, swatting mosquitoes.
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