"A Place of My Own"

Michael Pollan's place may be better or more thoughtfully crafted to its purpose than mine, deliberately designed as a writer's retreat into the landscape of the imagination (and in his case, of Connecticut). It seems not to waste a single corner or to miss any vista. He conceived it himself (prodded by an architect's vision) and participated materially in its creation.

My Little House, on the other hand, was already on the ground -- in the back yard -- when we moved here a dozen years ago. My only contribution has been a new roof, a couple of new windows, an Earth Stove salvaged from the tear-down next door, and a cheap air conditioner.

The realtor passed along what turned out to be a tall tale about its antiquarian inception as slave quarters, but the truth is more prosaic: the daughter of its builder showed up unannounced one morning and corrected the record. It's older than Pollan's but by mere years, not epochally. No matter, though. It's still (to paraphrase CS&N) a very very very fine little house.

And anyway, Pollan and I share the very same wish for a slightly altered perspective that a small detached structure can afford. "Not just a room, it was a building of my own I wanted, an outpost of solitude pitched somewhere in the landscape rather than in the house."

I've done significant work in my "outpost," and idled on its porches and in the hammock strung nearby. Our kids and their friends and I have played there, too. Mostly I've gazed at it across the yard and pined for the leisure just to hang out there, to inhabit its rustic space and let its primitive pace pull me back to a more measured rhythm of living. Maybe it's silly to wax romantic about a shack, but I do. And Pollan does, about the "hut" he says is built for dreaming.

He details the construction, purpose, and meaning of his elegant little house in A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder (Random House, '97). It inspired me to ruminate on and in my own ramshackle retreat, and now to be there more often in body as well as spirit. The anchor of my working life for many years has been an old roll-top desk that comes equipped with its own probably-tall tale about a 19th century pedigree and a former life in a Missouri fire-house. Whatever. I'm moving it one more time, a couple hundred feet, to take up residence in my home not far away from home.

One problem, at this point: it's out of wireless Internet range. Will that be a hidden blessing? I'll keep you posted.