taconic sculpture park and my ruth
you start the morning with coffee in hand, music on the stereo, driving across the mass pike while the sun is still not all the way up, and even if it were, this time of day it's at your back anyway. things are mostly flat through worcester, getting a bit more scenic as you pass through warren and palmer, and then settling out a bit as you descend into the connecticut river valley.

past westfield, the mountains come back and at some point after crossing the appalachian trail, you pass under an overpass and the road curves to the left, revealing a giant valley with the turnpike weaving an S across its expanse, finally tucking itself under a bridge and around a corner behind a ridge at the far end. from previous years' drives, you know that you're seeing across a two-mile expanse, and that, short of being on a boat, it's the only place in the world you've been to where such a view is possible without boarding an airplane or elevator or climbing a mountain.

you reach the far side of the valley and are swallowed up once again by trees and the stockbridge exit comes and goes and then you're in new york and you pass the signs for austerlitz and think about how you used to wonder what scandal might occur if someone vandalized the sign and made it say 'auschwitz', and then paying the toll, two more minutes and then the taconic parkway which, as far as you're concerned, is one of the most beautiful stretches of road you've ever seen.

and it really is beautiful. and you're driving through lush green mountains and fields and over hills and ridges and pretty much everything looks just like this:







and this:







and you keep driving and daydreaming and the trees on the left give way and WHAT IN THE HOLY HELL???







you know you were imagining it, so you pull over, but in fact you were right! up at the top of the hill, looking out over the whole valley, as out of place there as it also somehow makes complete sense, there is indeed a gigantic human head!







this calls for explanation. so you follow spencertown dirt roads meandering up and down hills and through the woods and half-way down a particularly steep hill and around a particularly sharp turn, the forest breaks on the right. welcome to the taconic sculpture park:







ron kanwit is the sculptor. he works in plaster and marble and this is his property and his house and his creations and he has taken his not inconsiderable land and turned the entire thing, including his house and garage (the latter seen at left and below) into an outdoor gallery and everything is for sale.







along the driveway:








one of my favorite pieces, also along the driveway:







on the right, just before the final turn into the forecourt, you glimpse the house. once upon a time it was a simple farmhouse. those days are no more.







on the left, another of my favorites. some pieces were around two feet tall, while some were truly monolithic. he stood a little higher than waist-height (i'm just about exactly six feet tall):









and finally up the rest of the way to the house. apparently it is in some ways even more amazing than the grounds, but we didn't want to ring the doorbell on a sunday morning:













this was confectionate's favorite. or at least one of her favorites. picking just one would have been impossible for either of us:







the land continued to slope upward past the house, eventually getting to the reason i'd gone in the first place. the head. again, i'm six feet tall. by far the most impressive piece, the head is forty feet tall.




i don't know who pencilled the eyes.







another contender for my favorite piece:







more pieces:















wait, go back to that lady coming out of the disc. what... down in the woods behind her, on the left... what... what is that? nothing much, just a little guy, peeking out to say hello!







so we walked down to meet him. it was the long straight path seen above, but what you can't see is that it takes you through meadows of a decidedly jane austenian nature, all wildflowers and butterflies and the like, quite beautiful.






ticks be god-damned, lori wanted to commune with the meadow. i complied.







we finally reached the bottom and found our friend. he looked... well, a bit worse for wear. i wanted to move the branch, but thought better of it at the last minute.







then we looked to the right, and... what's that?







on the way over to find out, this has nothing to do with anything. i just really love queen anne's lace.







oh! it's... another guy? i liked him more than lori did.







the path we were on continued to wind its way through the bottom of the meadow, and it was only as we started to climb back up toward the house that i realized how far we'd descended through the meadow!







finally arriving back at the top of the hill, we did one more tour of the main area before heading back to the car. i'll close out this leg of the journey with what might be my favoritist guy. he was probably, including the base, about ten or so feet tall:







around back, much like the giant head, he had a secret door:







and before we get back in the car, let's just have one last breather. i promise i'll be quick, i just need to sit for a moment. thanks, man.







aaaand, we're back on the road. do you know about ruth? in the late 1960s, as you well know, my parents moved to the palmer woods neighborhood of detroit, where ruth and her then-husband (he's long since passed away) chuck lived. well as the story goes, ruth and chuck heard about a young couple buying the house on the next block, they went over to say hello, and the rest is history! they struck up an immediate, close friendship that endured. after ruth and chuck divorced, chuck started getting very heavy into drinking and drugs (it was ultimately a crack addition that killed him), and while still friendly with chuck, mom and dad stayed close with ruth. but she moved to california and mom and dad had desertbriar and myself to contend with, and distance being what it is, and it wasn't until a number of years later that mom and ruth reconnected and rebonded and were in a number of ways inseparable and somewhere in it all, ruth and i formed this very wonderful friendship, and she is just an amazing woman, probably nearing (if not over) seventy at this point, but still at the gym every day, a former disco queen artist hippy spiritual being still wearing the same platforms and very into healing crystals and energies and buddhism and herbalism and until a few years ago, she (along with her swiss engineer boyfriend rene) lived in an amazingly beautiful one-room schoolhouse in the woods near red hook:




a little zoomier:







they had subdivided the property and built another house on the land, with the idea to stay in the schoolhouse and sell the new house. they ended up doing the opposite, selling the schoolhouse and keeping the new one. i loved the schoolhouse, but i can't blame them. the driveway is a narrow dirt lane that winds around behind a tall berm and through the trees past a meadow on the right. it curves to the left and up a hill and suddenly even though it was right there all along, you somehow missed it and right in front of you, there is the house, which i am now officially in love with.







ruth and mom's taste were nearly identical. if this were mom's house, i have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that it still would have looked just like this:











i can't believe we'd not seen each other in seven or eight years. y'all? girlfriend is fabulous. in all this time, while she tells me that i "have a man's face now, you've lost all the the little boy aspects" (she talks like that - the last time i saw her we got stoned and she got stuck on a twenty minute ramble that started with her pointing to one temple and saying "wait! i'm getting something. it's... oh, it's like a gift, it's... i'm having an image now of the way that, before we're born, god forms our faces, putting our eyes and nose and mouth in place, forming cheekbones..."), she still looks exactly the same, size two and all. say hi, ruth!







she's known me since, as she says, i was in the womb. we went to lunch, we went to a museum, we got coffee, she's supposed to possibly come out to boston for the day in september.

i cannot wait.