Ridgeview. The name fits. When I stay here myself, I start every day (unless it’s pouring) sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs on the second floor deck, looking down across the property, past the sugar maples and the black birches, the white pines and the red oaks, to the ridge across the river. I suppose it’s about two miles to the crest of the ridge. There’s a house up there now, new in the last ten years. It is, most times, the only house I can see from mine. Yes, I have neighbors closer: a hundred yards through the trees in one direction, and about fifty yards in the other. But because of the trees, except in mid-winter, I don’t see them. I hear them now and then, but I rarely see them.

If that’s what you are looking for: that sense of escape without what I call “The Stephen King” experience of aloneness, then you’ve come to the right place. Things are close by. You can get to a neighborhood farm stand in less than five minutes by car. A grocery store in a minute or two more. A local restaurant, with bar and full menu (and their own root beer!) in five minutes, A great, 5-star restaurant in about ten. Brattleboro is ten miles. Marlboro and the famous music festival there in twenty minutes. Putney and the OTHER famous music festival, the Yellow Barn, about twenty in another direction. Covered bridges—two—within five minutes. Or you can sit on this deck with me (in spirit anyway) and enjoy listening to silence, or what we think of as silence until we lean closer. Go in and light a fire in the wood stove if it’s chilly. Relax. Slow down. Enjoy life in Newfane.