Making an Old Home New

Making an Old Home New the renewal of the Trinity Retreat Center: a monthly photo journal [latest: March, 2017]

Chapel and Main House

The land sits quiet under the last snow of winter, but the house is alive with painters, carpenters, and other contractors, addressing needs from the foundation to the finishes.

Several weeks ago I finally moved up to the retreat center full-time, while Javier was teaching in Barcelona. This week he finally joined me, and made this beautiful house feel fully like home!

Enjoying the March Nor'easter!

[If you would like to see daily updates of the large and small changes to the house, and the texture of our lives, follow me on Instagram as countrypriest, and follow co-director Joe Rose as trinityretreatct.]

Updated Photos (March, 2017)

It's been a long time coming, but finally last month we boxed up our Brooklyn apartment and transplanted it to this little river valley (in another snowstorm!) It's great to finally fully call this place home!

Heidi made homemade macaroons that were waiting in the fridge when we got here!

The day before we arrived, several donkeys did too! The farm grows...

A bigger first-week stock up than I have ever done in my life - every trip to town has to count!

Joe and I went winter camping soon after the move - the Scandinavian fire-log and four-season sleeping bags made all the difference!

Several days a week Heidi makes lunch for the work crew. Simple goodness is so delicious!

The chapel is becoming a still-point sanctuary,

And so is our home at the end of the road.

The kitchen-dining room gives a view of the river that's impossible to take for granted

Even in cold weather, we end most days at the river shack, which has become our most grounding center point here.

Read on if you want to learn more about the buildings, the land, the past, and the people who are presently renewing it.

The buildings

The chapel dates back to the camp's earliest days. Built both with local stone and with stones that the first priest gathered from sacred sites around the world, there are even older stories woven deeply into the fabric of this place!

The main house was added on to several times to become large enough to accommodate sixty people. Now painted white, it is luminous in nearly every light.

There are a half-dozen surrounding buildings; the oldest of them are jewels, like the Barn [background photo] a fantastic space for a dozen great ideas!

Another unused barn, perhaps 250 years old - used as storage for decades, but not for long (I see community gathering space, maybe even an art studio!)

A big gathering space that has even more possibility. We've already used it for a local community art show.

A couple little spots like this have been overflow in the past; we're thinking about what's next - maybe a resident intentional community??

The Land

Arriving from the city, it is easy to under-anticipate how much the landscape matters, not merely as scenery or a pretty backdrop, but for the way the land regulates and encompasses. Here we are all guests, and we are all home. We get to participate in and steward, rather than control, our environment. It's a living, breathing presence of Presence.

What adds to the specialness of this place is it's variety of use over the past 250 years. A trout stream, old stone walls, a town road, and even a living train-line cross through the woods...

From earlier in the fall:

The train came through 150 years ago and brought new life to the village of West Cornwall. Stories are still told of the circus training arriving with giraffe's heads sticking out of the car, and kids from New York City coming here to camp flagged down the train to take them back home.

There is a "mountain" just over the chapel roof that is begging for trails to be opened to its top!

This is the view from the top of Mine Mountain, down into the retreat center's valley.

This is a drone's eye view of the village at the end of the road (the retreat center is about a half-mile away, just around the bend in the river). West Cornwall is largely all historic buildings, and has the oldest covered bridge in New England.

The Housatonic River is certainly the most powerful presence on the property - it's always audibly speaking.

The Past

In 1915, a priest serving one of Trinity's chapels, Fr. Schlueter, raised the money to buy a small farm in northwestern Connecticut, as a place of refreshment and formation for the children of his parish, who lived in impoverished tenement slums that were even more brutal in the summer months. They created an intergenerational camp focused on the most vulnerable and underserved youth from the city, which lasted into the 1980s. It's beautiful DNA to work with!

Click here to read an end-of-life reflection by Fr. Schlueter that shows the heart of the extraordinary priest who started this place!

It all began in the old farmhouse - still the main building at the core of the center.

The chapel was soon to follow, used several times daily in good Anglo-Catholic form!

From the 30s: a springtime rogation procession coming around the milk barn toward the chapel. Our idiom might be different now, but I like following an original community that was so ritually connected to the ground it stood on.

A whole community of sisters once worked with the girls section of the camp.

The river was the swimming hole of the camp for many years

And it was a pivotal time for hundreds of kids through the 80s. I'm already hearing back from several who attended as far back as the 1930s, writing to tell me how much this place meant to them. Again, wonderful DNA to carry forward!

The People

More than anything else here, it's the people who make the place. These are the folks who are already pouring such graceful planning and prayer and vision into the place that it's already taking on an irresistible personality that feels like "Home" in profound ways.

I know I sound like I'm selling something, but just wait till you get here and see for yourself!

Heidi and Joe Rose, co-directors of this new venture and already close friends. And yes, those are eggs from the chickens who are already living out back!

Amy is a master gardener, who listens so well to everything around her, especially growing things, and knows way more about chainsaws than I do!

Amy, with Jeff Fox, the painter, who is renewing the main building, inside and out.

Gerry the carpenter, who is a master craftsman in the old style; a truly rare breed.

(There are several others, and I'll get their pictures soon!)

All these folks are local residents, though in any market they would be the finest quality one could hope to find. In addition to their considerable skill, they are bringing to their work a devotion to this place and its mission, which is one more gift that makes the whole project feel enchanted.

a place to call home...

This cabin has served many purposes during its many decades of use, and now we are thrilled to call it home. It's rustic quirkiness suits us well; it's one of those places that seems deeply rooted to the land on which it sits, and I think it will help us do the same.

This shack is right at the water's edge. It was built back in the 30s, and the hand-cut & mitred framing beams inside are American Chestnut, now extinct. Its vibe is as wonderful as its looks. I think it will be where most of my writing and dreaming gets done!

Looking downstream from in front of the Shack

This project is much more than a renewal of a piece of property and its program; it is the recovery of a grounded faith that rests in the rhythms of creation, and creates flourishing and inclusive community as it participates in that creation. I know that this new adventure will stretch us to our limits, and beyond - so that we discover how deeply we are all already connected in a story and a dance much larger than we had imagined!

Click here for a flyover of the Town of West Cornwall from earlier this Fall

Already last fall the buds were already set for spring, and now it is just around the corner! It's exciting to participate in this special place as it rises again! -- Check back next month for more photos....

Created By

Daniel Simons

Appreciate

Credits:

All photos: Daniel Simons

Made with Adobe Slate

Make your words and images move.

Get Slate