I keep thinking about that psychic reading I had a few months back. I asked about California. Would Tracy and I ever be able to spend time there? I asked because California had become symbolic to us of a feeling we wanted more of in our lives.

I don’t see you in California, she said. I see you in New York.

It made no sense to me at the time.

But you know I always say, if something about a reading doesn’t resonate, just put it to the side and come back to it later.

Here we are, loving New York and feeling such a sense of belonging here.

On Sunday, we moved from our midcentury house in the woods to a carriage house in the village.

Monday morning, on a work break, I walked in for a bit of shopping, and picked up lunch from Little Apple Cafe.

There are more people still masking here than there are at home, but the big difference is how I’m treated as someone who is wearing a mask. No one stares at me or rolls their eyes, no one thinks it’s weird, there’s no hostility about it.

In the afternoon, I took Rocky for a gentle little walk on our street.

I love how people are here. Not just how they dress or what they’re doing or talking about, but the way they are, their energy.

I keep seeing these women with swirling grey hair and wooden walking sticks headed toward the woods and I want to walk with them.

I love that there are no chains here, and I love that businesses are open two or three days a week, some only on the weekend, and everything closed by 6.

It’s all so flexible and organic.

There is a harmony here I haven’t felt in a long, long time. Maybe ever.

Martha and Gary invited us over for dinner, a completely lovely experience.

We came home and turned the music on. Radio Woodstock was playing Little Feat.

We can’t move here but man, we sure could live here.

I woke up to fog on Tuesday morning.

The house felt a little bit like a lighthouse.

Then the fog cleared and the sun came out.

After my morning Zoom meeting, we picked up lunch from Nana’s.

Early evening, we stopped at the Tinker Street Cinema, so I could get a picture (Moonage Daydream is playing,) then picked up dinner from the Red Onion.

After dinner, we took an evening walk about. Nights are a good time to walk in the village with Rocky because the sidewalks are clear.

I keep having to remind myself, stretchy tie dye pants would not work on my body type. I want them to, but they would not.

We stopped in front of the building where Bob Dylan lived when he was here, where he wrote Subterranean Homesick Blues and Mr. Tamborine Man.

I’ve been thinking a lot about anxiety and how it moves around in my body and my thoughts all the time and how there was a day last week when I felt it break loose and fade.

I’ve been thinking about how we end this trip and go back home without picking that anxiety back up, without shutting down the parts of ourselves that have come alive here.

Our lives had become small due to the pandemic but we are still mitigating risk here. We don’t dine indoors, we wear masks inside public spaces. It’s simply easier to do those things here and still have full and enriching experiences.

Many lifetimes ago, when I lived in the city, I would sometimes feel like I was going to go insane if I couldn’t get out, so I would get on a Metro North train and visit some small village in the Hudson Valley.

I went to Cold Spring Harbor several times and Sleepy Hollow. (Washington Irving’s house is one of my favorite haunted houses ever.)

I never even thought about Woodstock.

I suppose that’s because there’s no train from Grand Central to here, but I don’t even remember knowing how close Woodstock was to New York.

People for sure know now. I’m glad we extended our stay so we could witness the village swell up with city people on the weekend then quiet back down.

On Wednesday, I got some work done early then we headed up to the summit of Mead’s Mountain so we could see The Church of the Holy Transfiguration of Christ-on-the-Mount.

From Wikipedia:

The Church of the Holy Transfiguration of Christ on the Mount is a modest, single-room, hand-built wooden church near the summit of Meads Mountain in Woodstock, New York, originally constructed c. 1891 by William Mead and his wife, Anna Della Mead. Services in the Sarum Rite of the Western Orthodox (Catholic) tradition are held each Sunday morning. It is purported to be the repository of a Marian weeping Icon. In the 1960s, Father Francis, the much-beloved "hippie priest", here welcomed hippies who had congregated in town during those years that culminated in the famous art and music festival. Fr. Francis began the practice of this lesser known branch of Catholicism, which acknowledges the Pope as an earthly spiritual leader but, unlike classical Roman Catholicism, does not consider the Pope to be supreme or infallible. The Church has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places, due in meaningful part to the devoted efforts of Father Deacon John Nelson, an understudy of Fr. Francis and peer of contemporary spiritual leaders who reverently maintained the Church until his death on August 1, 2017. Fr. John's remains were committed to the earth alongside the structure following a traditional requiem mass.

I found an article he wrote in 1970 titled, “Hippies - Hope of the Future,” and a fascinating recorded interview in which he talks about the origins of the artist community in Woodstock and the how the name Woodstock has always meant a place of refuge.

He referred to himself as, “an unashamed Pacifist when there were only five known Pacifists in public life.”

Next to the church is Karma Triyana Dharmachakra, a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery and across the road, the Overlook Mountain Trailhead.

There is such deep peace on the top of this mountain.

Icons, wheels, and flags make the prayers visible, but mostly, you feel it. You breathe prayer here.

I came back to the house for work, then in the afternoon, we popped over to the Farm Festival to see the stacks of beautiful carrots and babka and live music.

We bought some deliciousness from Sow Good Bakery. I mean, honestly. So delicious.

And we ran into our friend Martha. Because this is a small town.

The weather on Tuesday and Wednesday was absolutely perfect.

Thursday brought grey skies and rain all day.

I got up early to work then started to look at all of the things I needed to pack back into my suitcase.

Staying here this extra week enabled us to relax a little more deeply. We got to experience living in the village and living up on the mountain. We got more of a feel for the vibe of this place than we would have if we’d gone home when we’d originally planned.

I rarely visit a place without imagining what it would be like to live in that place and completely diving into that imagining and creating a fictitious life for myself.

Tracy and I agree that of all the places we’ve ever visited, this is the place where we have felt the most at-home, the place where that imagination of living here unfolds with natural ease.

When we left Woodstock on Friday morning, we drove over to Kingston for breakfast and discovered another interesting town we’d like to explore.

Until next time, Kingston.

It was such a good trip - good for our souls and our brains and our hearts.

So now we take that healing back home. We allow it to rearrange us for the better.

woodstock travel journal, 2