My great-grandparents
were lovers; they had five children, four girls and one boy (my grandfather).
Of those children, all had at least two children. My grandfather himself had four
children and two step-children we count as in the family as well, each of which
had at least one child of their own. Suffice it to say that, every nine years,
when the Dwight Kenrick Taylor family get together at Butterhill, we have to
rent tents and hotels in town, because the Big House isn’t that big.
With all these kids, my great-grandparents didn’t want
their dear home to turn into the object of hereditary jealousy or infighting
between their children, so they did something unique. They took the entirety of
their property, and turned it into an easement with the New Hampshire government,
meaning they had the state agree that, from this day forth, no new structures
(excepting a maple honey sugar barn, horse stable, or workshop) could be built
on the property. Also for perpetuity, the land was rendered indivisible; it
could not be developed or handled in any other way excepting maintainance or
the aforementioned improvements, and the ownership of the property was placed
into a united trust handled by my great-grandparents and their children.
Wanting to retire, my grandparents agreed to give their “shares” of the Big
House property to their children (this is theoretical, because again, the whole
family is in the Trust, and every decision has to be unanimous) in exchange for
a social security. Ever since then, the trust for the Big House has lived on.
As our families have remained connected by this house and the tradition behind
it, we have all grown greater by the love we have for one another, something
that likely would not have occurred, given our relative diaspora over the
globe, without the Big House.
As great as the social and filial gains have been in this
respect, the Big House is no easy task to manage. While the easement was a
great solution to a tough problem at the time of its inception, it causes
problems for the family. We are allowed to build additions to the Big House,
and did so in the 1990s to add a sun room off of the piano room on the east
side of the House. However, the foundation is crumbling and the old girl
requires extensive structural repairs. With the costs of restoration, it would
actually be more economical to knock down the old structure and build something
entirely new in its place; we could also make it bigger, to accommodate more
family, or so that it could accommodate guests. The taxes for the easement are
a little different though, and the family all chips in for general upkeep and
to keep the fridges stocked for guests. Aunt Harriet runs this all from the
Little House.
We know the easement, besides keeping our family together
for five generations, brings rewards to New Hampshire as well. The whole
property, large as it is, is home to a wide range of wildlife and flora. In the
springtime, wildflowers pepper the field and backyard, and my
great-grandmothers old garden blooms to life. The field itself grows tall with
grass, about four feet, so that playing capture the flag feels more like hide-and-seek.
Deep in the summer by the creek, ferns and moss flourish in the damp, warm
climate, creating a forest floor from the Cretaceous Era. One day when I was
about thirteen, I was walking alone from the Big House about a mile to the
Brook, through this same forest. Whistling to myself, I heard a noise about twenty
yards in front of me in the undergrowth, and saw, to my enormous fear, a huge
mother bear, and with two bear cubs at her feet. The sight of the bear was no
worry, for black bears often wandered around the property, eating the
blueberries from Harriet’s field and even the birdseed from her birdfeeders.
What scared me was the two cubs; a black mother bear will not shy at protecting
them, and can run faster than thirty mph. Slowly backing away, I turned and ran
back up the trail, thankful to find no mother bear following me.
One morning I woke up early, right as the sun was coming
up. I walked downstairs to get a cup of water, and peered out the window to see
a rafter of ten turkeys marching in a line across the field. Knowing that in
the silence of the morning any noise could spook them, I silently slipped on my
shoes and, ducking into a declevity running the length of the backyard, managed
to make it to the tall grass unseen. Checking I was upwind of the turkeys, I
crept towards them, crouching and crawling on my stomach, until they were about
ten yards away, just out of the long grass at the edge of the treeline on the
far north end of the field. Knowing the sand trap and the water pit lay a
little beyond this point, I watched the turkeys for a moment longer, before
exploding from the grass, waving my arms and whistling, and they scattered. I
tried to herd one of them towards the pond in an effort to trap it, but turkeys
belie their goofy appearance; they are nimble and quick, and an awful lot
bigger up close. I don’t actually know what I would have done with a turkey if
I had caught it.
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