Roland Park was a great place to be raised. Big old houses styled like English suburbs with lots of places to walk, nice yards, very POSH! big houses, we had help, maids, gardener. It was a wonderful neighborhood to grow up in. We could play outside unsupervised. the neighbors were nice, stores and schools nearby. Yet I didn't want to be a Roland Park person when I grew up. It was not a real conscious thought. Maybe it was reading over the years that made living in the non suburban setting so appealing Heidi, The Egg and I, We Took To the Woods. Maybe it was the visits to my Aunt and Uncle's farm and the farm where my sister lived. All seemed more romantic, more me, more us. Roland Park was proper. One understood, knew that one must marry well and do everything properly there. Living in the woods seems such a nice alternative. Maybe we were just children of the sixties, hippies.
We didn't want or need big and/or fancy. I liked the concept of working the land ourselves rather than hiring people to work for us. We left suburbia year one, heading to Maine where we bought our first land and built our first house. Maine was hard for 20 year olds with Not much work, no money and Nothing happening. We did a year and came back to work on Tim's father house, then the house at Olney, then we bought 27 acres delapated house in MD and really got to work..... trash removal and renovations and gardens and geese and animals. We had to work to support that 27 acres.
I never thought as a teenager that I would live on 27, 12 or 80 acres in a rural area. Here we are tiny town Maine. Now I cannot imagine living any other way. I walk out in the morning in my PJ's in the fog in the grasses and look at the trees, birds, spiders, and mountains and am in awe of being here in our non fancy totally romantic place.
Our life here and where we have been, feels right.
