LOCALadk Magazine

excited clamor of their voices tingling through the night, and suddenly I saw, in one of those rare mo- ments of insight, what it means to be wild and free," In the winters, she would cure with Fred and Kate at their cottage in Saranac Lake. Though we don't know for sure if it was the fresh air, the therapeutic journ- aling, the year long companionship of the Rice family (and her beloved pet goose Mr. Dooley), or a combina- tion of all three, Martha lived into her 60's. She pub- lished three books based on her journals: The Healing Woods, The Way of the Wilderness, and A Sharing of Joy. Here I am once again, on top of the hill looking into a third-floor window. This was where Adelaide Crapsey, who was 35, would pen her very last poems. Adelaide was a professor of poetry at Smith College and invent- ed the "cinquain poem"-a five-line poem with a set number of syllables. The Miss Lucy Cottage was run by two sisters and had room for only one patient, which was unusual for that time. Most patients who came for the cure wanted to socialize with others to help pass the time. Yet in Adelaide's case, her physician recommended she stay isolated due to the severity of her tuberculosis. She spent November 1913-Au- gust 1914 in the cottage, likely understanding her fate, her poetry fluctuating in mood between finding beauty and resentment. Her most well-known poem was written just months before she succumbed to her illness. It was called, quite bluntly, "To The Dead In The Graveyard Underneath My Window (written in a moment of exasperation)" In it, she berates the inhab- itants of the graveyard who seem to be resigned to their fates, "Oh, have you no rebellion in your bones? I will not be patient! I will not lie still." She returned to her home in Rochester in August 1914, and passed away surrounded by family and friends on October 8, 1914. Her lifelong friend, Jean Webster, would write the foreword to her book of verse that was published after her death. She said of her friend, "Adelaide was by nature as vivid and joyous and alive a spirit as ever loved the beauty of life, worked doggedly for many years against the numbing weight of a creeping and pitiless disease." Sixty-two cure cottages and 144.8 walking miles later, mud season has long gone, and fall will soon be here. The original purpose of my project has certainly been satisfied. I find myself returning to several of the cure cottages from time to time, to pay my respects and remember those who lived in them, who suffered in them, who managed to create beauty amid despair. And that has been the lesson for me. Creating beauty amid despair. Finding things to be grateful for when the days seem dark and cold. Grateful for the air in my lungs, grateful to live in these beautiful, magical Adirondacks. "There is a brown road runs between the pines. And further on the purple woodlands lie, And still beyond blue mountains life and loom; And I would walk the road and I would be Deep in the wooded shade and I would reach The windy mountain tops that touch the clouds" - excerpted from "To the Dead In the Graveyard Underneath My Window" by Adelaide Crapsey

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