18
/ BUILDING DIALOGUE / SEPTEMBER 2015
L
ike many people, I have spent my week-
ends this summer taking planes, trains
and automobiles to the wedding celebra-
tions of friends and family in various corners of
the United States. With my carry-on and camera
in tow, each trip is a chance to taste the flavor
of another American city or town, and to briefly
imagine what my life might be like as a resident
of that city or town, had fate taken a different turn.
This past weekend I imagined myself living in
the countryside of upstate New York near Ska-
neateles Lake, one of eleven long north-south bod-
ies of water aptly referred to as “The Finger Lakes.”
As a horse and buggy trotted past the 19th centu-
ry farmhouse some friends and I had rented and
fluffy clouds speckled shadows across vast fields
surrounding us, I indulged in the idea of what some
might call a more simple life.
“If I lived here I would wake each day and walk
down the dirt road adjacent to the house, observ-
ing the crops and flowers as the seasons changed,”
I thought privately. “Upon my return to the house,
I would sip coffee on the sagging clapboard porch,
enjoying the view while the day’s tasks began to take
shape.”
As the weekend progressed, I became more en-
amored with the fantasy. After strawberry picking,
swimming in the lake and dancing in a barn, my
professional future seemed to fade in favor of small
town life, not to mention reasonably priced real es-
tate. (Listings of properties in small towns or rural
areas in the region boasted multiple-acre properties
with water rights for less than $250,000 – almost a
farce in comparison with Denver’s soaring home
prices and diminishing footprints!)
The last day of the vacation, my fiancée and I
made our way from Skaneateles to Ithaca, home
of Cornell University and a town not unlike Boul-
der in its progressive celebration of local culture,
commerce and recreation built around unique geo-
graphical features. Sunny skies had been replaced
by ominous rainclouds, provoking memories of the
long gray winters of my childhood in nearby Syra-
cuse, New York. It seemed each town we passed be-
came smaller and older, boasting tarnished placards
of origination dates circa the mid-1800s. I was still
charmed, but my train of thought quickly began to
shift from porch-sitting to professional life.
“As a young professional and architect, what would
I do if I lived here?”
I wondered.
“How would I still
Beth R.
Mosenthal
Assoc. AIA,
LEED AP
BD+C,
Architect,
Anderson
Mason
Dale
Archi-
tects
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