There’s an amazing house built on and into the cliffs/wall near the entrance of Fort Tryon Park. I suspect at one point it was probably the caretaker’s house for the estate, and now I think it’s used by the Park Service for whatever.
Every time I run past it I think how great it would be to live in a house like this, which from one side looks very small, but on the other has tons of secret rooms and passageways extending down into the forest. I actually have a friend who grew up in a house in Westchester in which there was a secret (or actually just underground) passage from the house to the garage, which even though I was in my 30s when I saw it I thought was the best thing ever.
My dream is to live in a house like this; I would come out every day and spend a few hours sweeping the leaves or otherwise gardening before returning to the house, where (Stephen and) I would sit around all day and read, write, and play with the cats (and okay, watch some television). Once in a while, I would go downtown and be awestruck and depressed by the rapidly changing landscape, noting how expensive everything and everyone appears. Which come to think of it is not that different from my life now, so maybe I’m almost there!
