In the year 2000 I found myself quite by accident working with the Lake Placid Film Forum, and I proceeded to coordinate the festival for the following 3 years. Normally I got there 6 weeks before the event and needed to get 6 months worth of work done. Needless to say, I never left Main Street. By the time the Event was wrapped I was off to my next gig. In 2002, my colleague Tom suggested that I stick around and enjoy the beauty of the Adirondack Mountains, and offered his sister’s house in Keene Valley for me to stay. I was in heaven. Every morning I would wake up in this gorgeous house in the woods and hit the Deer Brook Trail to the top for a scenic view, jog down and headed to the office. What a lovely way to start the day.

One night Margo Fish called and invited me and my friend Joan for dinner. Margo lives in the magical camp called Tapawingo that she and her husband, Mac built with their 4 children over 40 plus span of years. It was 11 years ago today, in fact, that Margo’s brilliant husband, Mac died while jogging through the woods on the Jack Rabbit Trail near their camp. The only way to get to Tapawingo is to walk a 1/4 mile through the woods or go via lake by boat. So they had to haul everything in by wheel barrel or by boat. It’s daunting to think about that when you look around here at the rustic elegance.

All the buildings are hand-hewed wood and glass. And from almost every bed on the camp you can see the lake through the trees. As you walk through the woods you first come across hand made cement mosaic stairs that take you up to the dining building, which is next to the kitchen building, which is across from Margo’s study. Around the corner is the original building which was a little hunting cabin, and is now the library. There is a bridge that takes you over boulders and through the woods to the Chapel (Mac was a chaplain and now Margo is an ordained minister).

Below are more sleeping buildings, a wood burning hot tub, Mac’s study and eventually you will land on the dock. If not for the dock, you would not see Tapawingo from the water. Margo and Mac have kept all the trees of which the buildings are nestled among them.

Well to make what could be an very long story shorter, Margo invited me to stay with her that summer and it turned into 7 glorious months. Margo Fish is the most generous-of-spirit person I have ever met, and I have learned much from her over the years. But that year, we showed up in each other’s lives as if the divine had ordered it. I have visited Margo at Tapawingo nearly every year since. But this is the first year that I can stay for an extended visit again, much to to the joy of both of us.

This year I am staying in the little cabin by the boat house that Mac made for his daughters when they were young. I do have to duck my head into the door, but once inside I can move around quite easily. Margo fixed it up nicely and I added some things of my own to make it my little nest. There are so many that come to visit at Tapawingo each summer, I appreciate my little semi-private space away from the general traffic. Here’s the view from my little cabin.

I am so blessed to know Margo and to be able to stay in this magical place called Tapawingo.