COUNTDOWN TO “THE DREAM HOUSE” WALK—part one

Some people including me believe that I already live in a dream house. But there’s another one that until this Friday (if the weather cooperates) will have existed only in my mind’s eye. For the past 12+ years that we have lived here, I’ve been staring across the valley at a house that reminds me of Alain Fournier‘s classic, Le Grand Meaulnes, known in English as The Lost Estate. I keep hearing various stories and myths about my dream house which do not necessarily jibe with the ones I have been inventing on my own. Mine go like this: 

 It’s an abandoned house that has its own chapel. Nobody can figure out how to get there, although over the years it has, from my vantage, been too well-kept to have been left to nature. Its true magic comes out best at the end of the day when it’s the last place to be illuminated by the setting sun. Situated as we are, we have no sunset of our own. But it’s enough that someplace does, and that I can view that “some place” whenever I step outside. As I say this, I’m having a flashback to a favorite French song that we Junior Year Abroaders learned in 1966 which we performed to thank our French families. (“It’s always beautiful somewhere. If not there, it’s here.” Like most things it sounds better in French.) 

 Over the years that I’ve been longing to get there, I’ve been gathering data that only enhanced its allure: 

 At first, our intrepid Dutch friends tried but couldn’t find a route to get there. 

 My Albanian friend’s husband says he knows how to get there and knows the person who knows the property’s inheritors. 

 Farmer Galli only smiled when I used to tell him about my wish to go there. He implied that it would not be easy, but that one day we would go. However, I did not push it, and the window of time when it might have been possible passed, along with the passing of my dear friend. 

 Then other fearless friends who had no idea about my obsession with this place announced that on one of their adventurous walks they had looked across the valley and recognized our own house. What? Could it be that they had actually been to my dream house? I was stunned at this revelation—how had it never come up in the conversation that this was a place that I aspired to see during my lifetime? In response to my feverish questions, they began to tell me what they had seen there. And oh, by the way, how would I like to hike there on the next nice day? 

 That day has come! And if all goes well, it could make a good story. I’m working at putting it together now.