Nomads of summer

Anything but homeless, we travel like nomads through the summer, living out of suitcases and minivans, from one paradise to another, with occasional forays into the steamy depths of Manhattan.

We are fortunate, I know, to have the ‘best of both worlds.’ A pair of Broadway show tickets awaits my return to the city later this week. That will mean a late dinner at Barrymore’s with my husband—a real date, without children, and some time to reconnect.

We pay for these luxuries with our homes. Our city loft will be a European family’s American vacation for a month. We have spent weeks readying it for them, emptying closets and dressers, medicine cabinets and pantry shelves. The best part, for us, will be returning to a pristine home in September, hoping to find all the treasures we buried, intact.

Summer at our river house, in Narrowsburg, means getting to see a paradise reborn, as the gardens and islands bloom with flora both rare and ubiquitous. Herons grace the island in front of our house, standing for hours, their long necks an arc of anticipation. Turkey vultures squabble over the remains of an eagle’s dinner. When the eagle returns, the vultures will scatter, understanding their place on the natural totem.

As a parent of urbanized teenagers who don’t yet drive, I spend more time on trips to the mall than I would like, but when we get back to the river, the material world is easily forgotten as evening settles on the valley with sounds of nature, toads and cicadas, punctuated by silence.

Even the relative bustle of Riverfest brings a kind of soothing with it. River dogs in costume, tongues-in-chic, parade with their masters down Main Street. Only the artwork moves fast, and at prices to make the artists proud.

Theater tickets in these parts bring everything from opera to experimental ensemble fantasy from the Festival of New Theatre at North American Cultural Laboratory. A dinner at Dave’s Big Eddy or the 1906 Restaurant rivals any found in Manhattan. The perfect digestif is a walk across one of the many bridges that span the Delaware River, on a moonlit summer night.

But, in August, even our river house will be rented for a month, affording our nomadic lifestyle. Then, traveling light, we will retreat to the mountain that is Monticello, to a tiny bungalow in a community of old friends. The least valuable piece of our real estate puzzle, it is the richest in summer memories. Our children literally grew up there—with the inches they added each summer recorded on a doorway in the ancient summer house tradition.

When the bungalow outgrew our long-legged family, a transplanted camp cabin became the grown-up’s retreat, connected by a walkway lit with colorful plastic lanterns. Even now, that hideaway can rekindle an intimacy of long ago.

At the bungalow we are hidden among acres of forest and meadow, eleven families who go back 25 years together. This piece of real estate, with its high taxes and the low curb appeal of Monticello, lags far behind Narrowsburg or Manhattan in resale, but, to our family, it has unrivaled value. This is where the children learned to swim, met their best friends, picked their first blueberries (the sweetest ever), built a tree house (“No boys allowed”) and saw bear and turkey running free. Now my daughter, still a teen, imagines raising her own children here someday. For her, the bungalow is summer.

When friends who will rent our river house this month asked me where, among my choices, I would rather be, I answered “Narrowsburg” but maybe I lied, just a little. The truth is, I want it all.