Millbrook

[mallorys_camera]

The deal is I’m sick, I decided. Not IT sick, but some subtler malaise that fills my chest with saltwater and makes me very tired. Wednesday, I actually punked out two miles into my Walkway tromp. Could I have done the tromp? Probably, yes. And probably it would have made me feel better.

But I didn’t want to.

Maybe it was all that tromping in the rain Monday and Tuesday. Or maybe I got a tick I didn’t notice the other day when I was doing all that gardening, and now I have Lyme Disease.

Of course, it’s almost impossible to tell this kind of “sick” from depression. Except I am wheezing a little, though the little Chinese pulse oximeter sez my O2 sats are just fine.

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Yesterday, I drove to Pawling to return the National Counting Project gear. Pawling was settled by Quakers in the early 18th century, and I believe Lowell Thomas moved here after he was finished making Lawrence of Arabia famous. Also, George Washington set up one of his innumerable Continental Army command posts here.

It’s a pretty little town, and I was mad at myself for feeling too dispirited to get out and walk around in it.

I detoured along back roads, ablaze in autumnal foliage glory, for the drive back home, stopping in Millbrook, one of those tony Dutchess horse towns. John Foreman who kept the Big Old Houses blog (a big favorite of mine!) used to live in Millbrook on the Daheim Estate, which sadly, is behind high walls and thus off-limits to the curious. For one brief, shining moment, Daheim was the center of the psychedelic movement when LSD guru Timothy Leary moved in there in the 1960s. Leary let the pipes burst, John Foreman informs us with disgust.

There are a lot of antique stores in Millbrook filled with strange and interesting things: