At Trail’s End: A Love Story

  |  December 6, 2016

Off the beaten path

In 1964 a Latvian couple bought a small cabin up on Trail’s End Road and started to add space to it, building a home. Almost 40 years later my husband and I were looking for a weekend home in the country. We had a view of a forest of buildings on our 28th floor apartment in Manhattan, but we were looking for real trees. On a snowy day in January of 2003, we drove up a country road in Kerhonkson and saw smoke coming from a chimney. That sight was the first of many, many we fell in love with. We went on to look at other homes that day but all we could think about was the magic encased within the rooms we saw at the green gabled house on Trail’s End.

Since then we’ve learned so much about a town that we had never heard of before. The area is home to a plethora of artists and events. (For jazz and world music aficionados, music promoter Verna Gillis and trombone player Roswell Rudd reside here.) There’s an incredible relationship to food and where it comes from; farm stands line up along the different back roads, microbreweries abound, the Annual Pickle Festival and Chili Bowl Fiesta in nearby Rosendale are popular, even with out-of-towners. We found amazing local treasures, grew used to grabbing a hot fudge sundae or root beer float at Cherries on Route 209, having a cozy farm to table meal next to the fire pit at the Country Inn in Kripplebush (which includes an assortment of over 500 beers!), or walking across the old Monument Road at the Ashokan Reservoir at sunset. We may have bought a house, but we received so much more than just a home!

The house was “move-right-in” ready, as the family we bought it from would be moving to a house boat in Florida. They left a lot of furniture—including very cool Eastern European light fixtures, hand-crafted dining room furniture and an assortment of eclectic kitchen items. We loved it all. Over the years we added our own pieces into the home. Luckily, our 3300 square-foot had more than enough space to receive treasures by the car-load from our parents. In the first few years we made a few renovations to the space, enclosing an upstairs porch which we use year-round and adding a one car garage…with room for our motorcycle.

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A Wildling Place

Our home is a haven. In the morning, the sunlit terra cotta-colored kitchen fills with the aroma of fresh brewed coffee, while finches, chickadees and downey woodpeckers circle the feeders. Occasionally a group of turkeys will stroll through looking for a bite and the deer grace us with a hello before they dart back into the woods.

We took in a baby locust tree from my in-laws’ yard in Canton, Ohio which has grown into a happy home for our birds. As they sing to us from outside, music from a local radio station in Woodstock plays in the kitchen from an old radio that my mom handed down to us. Music can always be heard in the home, whether it comes from our antique radio collection, 78’s on a Victrola, or vinyl on a turntable

We’re never wanting for entertainment. There’s a home theater perfect for too-cold nights, the cable network has recently discovered our road, and we have enjoyed many nights sitting in our the living room with the fire place aglow. If the sky is clear, the celestial view is unmatched; we’ll sit by our brookside fire pit with a bottle of wine and make s’mores. We’ve had quite a few guests vanish to the enclosed porch upstairs – surrounded by the forest, wide open screens looking out into the woods – enjoying a tea light-lit evening listening to the sounds of peepers and crickets.

My husband is a music producer and sometimes turns the house into a recording studio. Cables run through the house – up and down the stairs – and each room is miked and ready to be recorded in. The album “Daniel the Brave” by The Adam Ezra Group from Boston was recorded there.

One of my personal favorite spaces in the house is a room we call the “Frank Lloyd” Room – a bedroom/office step-up nook off the hallway overlooking a waterfall in the brook behind the house. It is a writer’s haven; the views are sublime—each season filled with its own poetry—all bursting with beauty and endless inspiration. Perennials are abundant throughout the seasons; fiddleheads, poppies and joe pye, to name a few. I remember one morning peeking out the window of the room and seeing my mother-in law hoisting flat rocks from the nearby brook and bringing them up to a garden area, creating a path. Inspired by her vision and the beauty of the day, I popped on my sneakers and went out to help.

Take a short hike up a hilly patch across the bridge over the brook and you’ll have a view down to over our pond, home to a happy group of salamanders and frogs. A pair of ducks stop by for a quick visit in the fall, as enchanted as we are by the foliage. Head in another direction to Ski Slope Road, the last resting place of a rusted car which had driven off an old logging road in the 50’s. The backyard forest includes 3 ½ acres of the Catskill Mountains and the trail head to Vernooy Kill Falls is about a mile up the road.

More than a home

The scenic 2-hour door to door drive from the west side highway across the George Washington Bridge to the Palisades has its own treasures stashed away. Head north along the thruway to New Paltz and take in the scenic view of the Catskill Mountains from the Shawangunk Ridge, or turn a little left and take Route 17 west to 209 and stop at Cohen’s Bakery in Ellenville for fresh Challah bread for Sunday morning French toast!  (And of course delicious rugalach too!)

Our love for our Trail’s End home and the area surrounding us has been an incredible, unforgettable affair. We’ve gotten to share this place with so many of our family and friends, from outdoor birthday barbecue celebrations to Thanksgiving dinners in the dining room big enough for our extended family. We’ve put on our own pond-side fireworks show on the 4th of July, picked apples at a nearby orchard during fall foliage, taken winter walks in the snow and watched the first snowbells pop up in the spring thaw. Every part of this home is cherished, is beloved, and we know that we have been blessed with a magnificent, pastoral romance that will stay with us forever.

This gorgeous home isn’t just a storybook romance, it’s also for sale. Dara and Tim are looking for the next caretakers of their lovely abode, and they’re hoping to find someone who will appreciate it as much as they have. See the full listing here.

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