Quarantining & Brainstorming

On March 21, 2020 we were evacuated from the West Indies on one of the last (perhaps *THE* last) flights out of Antigua back to the U.S. COVID-19 had leapt the Pacific and Atlantic, and contagion rates were mushrooming. Our family vacation was suddenly cut short, and we found ourselves adjusting to a new reality. Lockdown. Obsessive news consumption. Shortages and panic buying. Toilet paper and N95 masks. Solidarity stunts and Zoom cocktail parties. Those early days turned into weeks as pandemic peculiarities eclipsed much of our lives. A challenging period in many respects, and yet Rosslyn’s icehouse rehabilitation emerged as an immensely positive and rewarding outcome of this time of quarantining and brainstorming.

The photograph above, taken 3-1/2 weeks later, transports me back to this slow motion, introspective time. Despite the fact that mud season in Essex is generally cold and damp, Susan and I logged many afternoons in that hammock, enjoying sundowners next to a bonfire.

Poking around in peripandemic photos, those early days when Susan and I had evacuated to Essex from a family vacation in Antigua, when we reignited long dormant fantasies about the icehouse, about transforming this historic utility building into a modern day work+life flex space…

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I recollect the afternoons that Susan and I spent here, observing, brainstorming, kindling a Solo stove, and watching the sun settle into the trees… (Source: Icehouse, April 11, 2020)

In the photograph above… I’m looking at Rosslyn’s icehouse, pipe dreaming and brainstorming toward what would eventually ripen into the icehouse rehabilitation project… I suspect that… I was already anticipating not only the immense reward of completing the rehab, but also the inevitably bittersweet triumph, coming as it would so close to the time when Susan and I would be winding down our tenure at Rosslyn. (Source: Anticipated Nostalgia)

Day-by-day we tempered our pandemic angst and restlessness with collaborative creativity. Back in 2007 or 2008 we’d postponed (and eventually, for all practical purposes, abandoned) plans to rehabilitate the icehouse. Once the building was structurally, stable and weathered in, we narrowed our focus to complete ambitious — and ever dilating — scopes of work for our home and boathouse. The icehouse became first and foremost, a storage building for lumber and lawn furniture. Early hopes dwindled and were mostly forgotten.

But hammocking adjacent to this handsome historic building, observing sunsets from this dramatic (but generally overlooked) vantage, reignited our curiosity. As curiosity and creativity are the closest of cousins, we were soon somersaulting from what-if’s to exuberant brainstorming. 

Soon discussions became drawings. Scribbled sketches evolved into AutoCAD plans. Iterations upon iterations upon iterations.

It was exciting. We were feeding on each other’s energy. It was irresistible. No longer just hammock time. We brainstormed and sketched over breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. We both realized that we had regretted curtailing our original vision. We both yearned to complete the Rosslyn’s rehabilitation, an adventure we began conceptualizing back in 2005 and committed to in 2006. Almost two decades ago!

So one of the enduring legacies of the pandemic is enduringly positive. Rosslyn’s icehouse reimagined. Not just the building as it is today, but the creative collaboration that it celebrates. Quarantining. And brainstorming. With my bride.