What Dwellings Linger

 

Big Tancook Island, Nova Scotia, Canada

I arrived home from my fall, cross-continent trip with my mind delightfully out of balance. I’d wake in the morning to a rolling tide of visions. All day, I’d be rocked by their waves, as if I were still on a ferry bound for Tancook Island in the Atlantic Ocean. Over two and a half months, from late summer into fall of 2025, I traveled across the North American continent and back. I camped in my Prius with Chester, my dog, or stayed in various accommodations and with friends. While I wandered, I set myself the task of staying present and remembering what felt significant or pleasing. 

Upon my return, the slosh subsided as I caught up on neglected fall chores and resumed my obligations. I woke less often, already smiling. Worried I would lose memories and insights, I gathered my trip calendars, traced my route on a paper map of the United States, and jotted notes in a small notebook. From these, I distilled four topics: Mover of Rocks, What Dwellings Linger, Stats, and Trepidations.

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What Dwellings Linger

My Childhood Home

I grew up in a cement-block house in a nondescript middle-class neighborhood. The living room, dining room, and hallway were painted a dark brown or wallpapered with lattice-and-lily patterns. I loved those delicious chocolate walls and elegant lilies. As a child, I admired the slanting corner fireplace, the linen-drawer nook in the hallway, and the back half-bath’s flooring, where, from the toilet, one could entertain oneself by finding fantastical creatures in the linoleum’s tiny blotches. In the book Topophilia, Yi-Fu Tuan proposes that there is “an affective bond between people and places.” My childhood house was shorthand for my most intimate and favored topography. But my roving eye didn’t stop there. I examined my friends’ homes, some with similar construction and others more exclusive, brick-fronted, with their Tiki bars and pool tables in novel daylight basements. I walked to junior high through an Italian-American neighborhood of 1920s and ‘30s brick houses and on into a landscape of older wooden homes. I judged rooflines, facades, and paint choices (ick, to that odd shade of green on a house on Pine Street). Without a vocabulary, I noticed eyebrow dormers and Doric porch columns. I freelanced in architecture and minored in racial and cultural differences in housing stock. It never occurred to me that most children didn’t work in my fields of expertise, or, even now, that most adults don’t walk blocks with the singular intention of noticing houses. 

I play a game like Clue, where players are given hints to figure out who committed the murder, where, and with what weapon. My version uses clues to guess what might have been altered in a house, what makes its design attractive, and how its interior is laid out. I spot when a Victorian has had its downstairs windows replaced with a single plate-glass window and now appears to be screaming beneath its eye-like second-story windows. I appreciate modern houses painted in dark gray, with a pop of orange on the front door for warmth, and I am often accurate about details: whether a home has a central hallway, where the bedrooms are located, and whether the kitchen sink has a view. Like the Google Maps little person you can place on any road to see a street view of the surrounding houses, I figuratively put myself into houses, into rooms. Years of reading architectural magazines and historical plan books inform my guesses and preferences. On the westward portion of this trip, I stopped at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater for a second time. It is my favorite house ever. 

Fallingwater, Pennsylvania

But my affinity for a wide range of architectural details and my interest in how people live led me to find delight in far less extravagant structures, like this former live-above-the-store building in St. Paul, Minnesota, with its jutting window seat. What a lovely place to view the tree-lined neighborhood.  

During my travels across the continent and back, some houses and neighborhoods pleased me—even as I passed them at sixty miles per hour. Others I looped back to examine more closely, and some I stopped to photograph. It is not a coincidence to me that the verb ‘to linger’ could be replaced with ‘to dwell.’ I passed millions of houses. I struggled to pick the ones I wanted to remember most.  

Stonington Cottage

Some houses, like the replica above of a stonemason's cottage in Stonington, Maine, or the Second Empire-style house at Schodack Landing in the Hudson Valley, and the tiny house on wheels in Montpelier, Vermont—all of which I stayed in—were enhanced by their hosts’ welcome. Each filled their spaces with their own beloved sense of topographic connections, sharing their love through their passion for detail and design. 

'Keep Out'

On a dog walk with Chester in Moose Jaw, Canada, I spotted the first house whose style I truly loved. It was a long and low Arts and Crafts bungalow. Unfortunately, the home’s stone-pillared porch was marred by a “Keep Out” sign, giving the house a foreboding, almost paranoid feel. The sign's intent felt offensive, making me wonder whether a welcome sign might have been a better way to protect the home.  

I crossed into the United States at Niagara Falls and followed the Erie Canal east through New York. As I moved eastward, the houses increasingly reflected the historical trends of earlier centuries. I especially liked the company-built houses, often constructed as multi-family dwellings. Their simple design, with porches and/or second-story balconies aligned along the block, was inviting. It was clear that many of the houses were home to new generations, and their occupants were more racially diverse than earlier residents. 

In South Portland and Belfast, Maine, I walked with friends to farmers’ markets, beaches, and bakeries. Houses were set so close to the road that even children could effortlessly call out “Hello” as though we were not strangers. It would be easy to grow fond of these neighborhoods.    

A Cape Cod

It wasn’t until Chester, a town on the Nova Scotian coast, that two houses held my wholehearted affection. The first was a dusky-blue Cape Cod built in the 1830s. The color seemed a blend of maritime blue and fog. In its narrow, cross-gabled entryway, high under the eaves, was a  Gothic-inspired window. It evoked church architecture and lent the house a sacred grace, a small peak of delight. The enclosed entry foyer spoke of practicality in a land where winter lingers long and hard. The house edged the roadway, with its left side perched on a knoll, as if it had backed in, sidled sideways, and sat to rest. An enclosed undercarriage supported its other half. In this lower level, a slanting light caressed a worn wooden desktop. I moved a little closer. I am always wary of being confronted for my trespassing gaze, but would the occupants of this Cape Cod be satisfied with an explanation that I wished to enter their home and write at that desk? Would they invite me in and offer me a cup of tea and a pen? Just dreaming. 

The Woodbox

The second house I loved was called “The Woodbox.” For years, I have tried to pick a name for my cabin. The earliest summer cabins in my community all had names like “Lucy Dell” and “Heap O’ Liven.” I liked the name “The Woodbox” and wryly wondered if I could borrow it. The house itself was lovely. Its stepped-back, stacked configuration, painted a light, airy gray, lifted its smallest room skyward, three stories up, offering a view of the sea and the town through its multi-paned windows. I could live by the sea in that little room, writing with my head in the clouds. Maybe I picked these two houses for their potential as workspaces.

There were other houses I hoped not to forget amid the slush of travel remembrances.

Paul Urann Home

On a busy two-lane highway in Maine, I doubled back and stopped at a Greek Revival house museum, The Paul Urann House, in the midst of an unfinished renovation. Approaching a carpenter working in the garage, I asked if I could wander inside. The home’s wide-cut floorboards, peeling glimpses of early wall coverings, and piles of donated furniture excited me, as did a tiny, bare room with one window on the upper floor. What had that little room been used for? Sewing? Birthing? Nursing? It felt like a room for a woman, a tiny sphere of contentment. I leaned briefly through the doorjamb, mindful not to overstay my self-guided tour. Linger a moment; remember this, I said to myself. 

Back Doorknob of Robert Frost's Stone House

At Robert Frost’s Stone House in Vermont, I felt the poet’s presence in light-filled rooms with their plain New England-style furniture. The detail I obsessed over was the back porch’s Bakelite doorknob, a burnished butterscotch. I assumed Frost’s hand had touched this knob as he returned from a walk on the night he wrote the poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” The knob could have been a poem had Frost fashioned it. Surely, he loved its beauty. I took a quick photo (unfortunately slightly blurry) to ward off the risk of forgetting it.

Daniel Rose's Original Home

In Reading, Pennsylvania, a few blocks from where my fifth-great-grandfather, Daniel Rose (1749-1827), a clockmaker, musician, and state legislator, had his shop and home (now an oyster bar serving the best fish and chips), I came across rows of rowhouses. Here was a neighborhood where I felt comfortable. I liked the idea of having lots of neighbors, lots of eyes on the street to keep everyone safe. I was even more delighted to find one middle-of-the-block rowhouse with a gorgeous mural painted across its front and doorway. According to a sign, the building was occupied by the Puerto Rican Civic Society. There was something joyous about the name and the building’s facade. I later learned that the Society is a fascinating blend of a nightclub and a humanitarian organization. Puerto Rican immigrants have become a significant and growing part of Reading’s population. I think the neighborhood's Latin rhythm would be fun.   

For want of a pail or two of paint, white clapboards across the Midwest in little towns here and there looked like markers of community disaster. I didn’t see any homeless people, but there were enough poorly kept houses that I'd guess everyone had a place to live. The towns were struggling. 

My game entertains me, but it also makes me aware of the iniquities in our world. It makes me more empathetic toward others who live in substandard or poorly maintained homes. Not that a poor or small house will necessarily predict unhappy inhabitants, or a rich or large one either, but there must be some measure of contentment for the inhabitants when their housing includes elements that delight and comfort them.  

 Here is a house that illustrates this:  

A Simple House in Peru, Indiana

It stood in town on a highway through Peru, Indiana. I later found several houses like this one in the area. A builder must have chosen this style as his forte. This one had dark-gray paint peeling from its brick walls. Someone had recently tried to paint it a pleasant cream but had gotten no further than a few swipes on the second story. Last year’s winterizing sheets of plastic hung rumpled against the panes. On one side, the original porch entry had been enclosed with a shed structure. The addition was not the most artfully done, but I am sure it made the house more functional. In the living room, there were two tall, very narrow front windows, each topped with curved headers and transoms. At the peak was another slim window. A child could have drawn the house; it was beautiful in its simplicity and proportions. Two more things made it endearing. Someone had pressed colorful, stained-glass-like paper in the transoms and hung a welcome sign on the door—so much more gracious than a ‘Keep Out’ sign. 

 

Although I didn’t highlight any new homes, when I stopped in Regina, Saskatchewan, for takeout at the Roots Kitchen and Bar in Harbour Landing Village, I found it surrounded by an entirely newly built neighborhood with a wide variety of housing options, all connected to parks and walkways. Above the restaurant was housing for seniors, and on the ground floor was a childcare center. Harbor Landing has 780 acres of a planned community. We need more housing, and this is a wonderful model. I could live anywhere here. Any abode. I could always paint mine chocolate-brown with lily-and-lattice wallpaper.

Thank you for lingering with me.