Return of the Forest vs Frank LLoyd Wright

Species List Forest, Conway, MA USA

How Frank Wright Reduced the Natural Landscape to a Playground for the Rich

Memories of Richard Stafursky, Brattleboro, VT

Unlike all of our eight abutters, we are happy when our open areas are free of human direction and are once again under the control of natural forces and processes. But fifty years previously my father was, in my eyes, competing as champion as worst natural landscape offender. I'll try to explain. As I was growing up in this place in the 1950's and 1960's my father constantly was working on our house. It was an isolated property one quarter mile form the Conway, Buckland, MA town line at the end of the Shelburne Falls Road Conway bus route. If fact, our house was the last house on the mountain road just before you cross the town line. The house was originally a cottage last used by local gin drinkers from Orange, Massachusetts. I remember that cottage then. It was a snug, happy, hot water, cast iron radiator heated home with hay barn/garage. That was to all change by the 1950's.

In addition to keeping a few dairy cows and raising their offspring for the butcher shop Dad was constantly modifying the land with stone work and plantings. My father wanted to "be" Frank LLoyd Wright and every modification to our house and grounds was intended to transform it into a Frank LLoyd Wright knockoff estate. By that I mean he replaced eves with cantilevered overhangs and the wood floor with red concrete. New England storm windows, so effective in winter, were replaced with one-pane picture windows more suited for warmer, Arizona-like climates. The new roof leaked and the replacement picture windows frosted on the inside. I spent many hours helping him scrape paint off these huge, building demolitioned, logo painted, plateglass monsters. I helped him buy redwood siding he used in the room interiors. He even added skylights and picture windows. I think only my mother did more detailing of the natural wood panels than I did. She spent many hours steeped in fumes on a shaky folding ladder as she brushed clear finish on the natural wood and filled finish nail sets with wood putty. When I returned from the Air Forces in 1970 I bought a set of four fire extinguishers ... my fear of a Frank LLoyd Wright-like building fire vulnerability was so great. I made my mother set off one of the extinguishers in the driveway. "Don't try to save them ... they're here to be used" I said.

Every piece of rare, west coast wood that he used made me cringe. Even as a teen I knew the redwood trees needed protection. My father knew this, too, and I told him so, yet he continued to remodel. He only switched to other wood when we needed to save money. He sort of would apologize to me and say "it's not Frank LLoyd Wright, but no one will know the difference." Notice how he said the guys name and not the architectural style.

I could not understand how my father loved the local forest so, yet built so wastefully. The modifications were not intended to last. All the mortise angles were nonstandard and thus it would be difficult for future owners to repair. Whenever I overhear Dad talking about our house he would also criticize local homes as being built by stupid people. My father had been out west and had seen Frank LLoyd Wright estates. That was the only thing in his head.

I know that my dad would have loved the protection I gave to his mountains and forests. If he were alive today and could hear my reasons why I returned all his acres under my control back to the natural landscape he would have listened without a word as we sat in the woods, nodded in agreement, taken a deep breath and said, "the trees are nice" and he really meant it! I don't think he could ever, in his mind, reconcile the cultural trappings of Frank Lloyd Wright's early twentieth century, gaudy, architecture with the need of the natural landscape to be left alone. If he had had the opportunity back then he would have built a Wright waterfall house on top of the brook that now runs unfettered through the Species List Forest. He believed that one should drink in the natural landscape and that by doing so one would thus gain a certain glamor in the eyes of the rich and famous. His desire to be recognized by this ridiculous social class was so powerful that when it never happened he said within days of his death by cancer "burn all my books."

Return of the Forest vs Frank LLoyd Wright? I'll take the millions of years of natural landscape evolution any day.