Wolf asked me why we decided to live in town, and why in a Victorian (when I was telling him how much I miss living in the country, being closer to wildlife). All I could say was that I've always loved old houses and had pictured myself living in one with bay windows----and with an attic, where I could play in those rafters with secret nooks, a childhood dream realized.
We had a fine big attic in the old Acadian house we restored in Louisiana, but it wasn't a place I felt comfortable----especially not after having found a snakeskin up there. . . yes. . . a snake shed its skin in our attic----and of course it's so hot and muggy there, leaving only a few weeks out of a year that it's cool enough to stand its upper realms.
Here, however, the attic is quite cool most of the time, with only isolated days that it might heat up to an uncomfortable degree. And so on rainy yesterday, here in June with our coastal temperatures still in the 50s during the day, I sought out the warmer attic and began to make what my goddaughter Mary-Margaret has made before and now her grandmother-age protegée has made, too: an attic nest.
But what's the impetus to go up there? In part, it's the height----here, there's one window from which (and this is where I've carved out my little space) you can see the mountains meeting the Pacific a little over a mile away. I could sit and stare at this view for hours. (Folks, of course, do this out on our little town's famous Pebble Beach Drive, but as you know, houses with ocean views are exorbitantly priced and they have almost no gardening area, as we are fortunate enough to.)
But the height isn't just for the view; it's also for the feeling it gives me. I think of cats who are always looking for the highest point to perch unexpectedly, just looking out. Thinking. Imagining. Separated from the everyday lived below. A retreat.
And so I've hung a few curtains and other fabric as soft enfolding walls and am looking forward to developing this attic spot as a focus of creativity. The narrowness of the attic steps has so-far prevented my hauling up a more comfortable chair to sit in (I even thought of putting a bed up there!), but here are the beautiful rugs that our lovely Fritz chewed holes in when he was still a puppy, the drawing table I wasn't using downstairs, and the old wooden ironing board, which is perfect as a table.
Now to begin one of those projects I've been meaning to! Sometimes, it just takes finding a new perspective.
