Sold on Autumn!

By Wade Rouse

While summer beckoned Gary and me to The Beach Coast, it was fall that sealed the deal.

We found our beloved Beach Coast cottage just as the leaves were changing, and we officially signed the paperwork and spent our first weekend in our new home in October. 

After spending two glorious weeks of summer vacation along the sandy shores of Lake Michigan, Gary and I felt The Beach Coast calling to us as soon as we left to return to St. Louis.

We didn’t manage to escape from the city until a few months later. That fall weekend, the air was crisp, but the sun was warm, and we decided to go on a local artists’ tour. We drove along the lake, and through the breathtaking countryside, stopping at artists’ studios hidden in the woods. It was like finding really talented Keebler Elves at every turn: We admired the work of woodworkers and weavers, watercolorists and glass blowers, textile artists and potters. Gary sipped cider, and I sipped wine, until I began to buy everything that wasn’t nailed to the walls. When we returned to our bed and breakfast, we told our innkeepers about our day.

“It’s too late,” they said. “The Beach Coast is in your blood now. Fall does that to dreamers and artists.”

They told us about an open house a friend was holding a few miles out of town.

“Knotty-pine cottage,” they said. “Woods filled with pines and sugar maples. Carriage house attached, which would make a great writing studio. It’s magical.”

And it was. Though what I first uttered upon entering wasn’t.

“We’re screwed,” I said, when I saw the house. It wasn’t just adorable, it was my dream cottage.

I played it cool, though. I kept my drooling to a minimum, aspirated my water when I saw the price, and calculated costs as I walked around the cottage and property.

This was the first cottage that captured the look, feel and memory of my grandparents’ log cabin in the Ozarks, the one in which I had spent the summers of my youth. The carriage house overlooked wondrous woods, not a house in sight. From the oversized windows of what would become my everyday writing studio, I could make out the pond and blueberry farms of our neighbors.

Moreover, the cottage was drenched in light and color. The acres of woods that surrounded the cottage were virtually glowing: Sugar pines drenched in red, sassafras veiled in yellow and orange, the rusty trunks and green tops of towering pines swaying in the autumn breeze like Zumba dancers. 

Gary and I walked the property that day, and inhaled that distinct scent that only autumn brings. We gathered maple leaves for our photo album, we surprised a group of wild turkey walking our woods, and we dreamed of what could be.

On our drive back to the city the next day, I thought of my dream cottage and mourned its loss to someone else. And then I began to get mad: I wondered why so few of us acted upon our dreams, pursued our passion, made our dreams reality.

We returned the next weekend and irrationally bought that cottage, which we immediately named “Turkey Run.”

I vividly remember everything about our first day in what we believed would be our getaway retreat but quickly became our permanent residence. Our realtor took a picture of us, and the color of the sugar maples behind the sold sign seemed fake, almost as if they had been digitally enhanced. Moreover, the trees seemed to be reaching down to hug us and thank us for our courage.

We had nothing in that cottage but a bed and a picnic table on the screen porch. The only items Gary had smuggled from the city were a couple of blankets, a crockpot and a cookie sheet. We made chili and chocolate chip cookies, and then we sat with our mutt, Marge, under blankets on our screen porch, drenched in the beauty of autumn and in the wonder of dreams.

That autumn day, I was the richest man in the world.

Wade Rouse is the acclaimed author of four memoirs, including the bestselling “At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream” and his latest, “It's All Relative.” A new anthology about famous humorists’ dogs, “I’m Not the Biggest Bitch in this Relationship,” was just published in September.  A portion of the proceeds will benefit the Humane Society. Wade has been hailed by NBC's Today Show, USA Today, The Washington Post, Detroit Free-Press and Entertainment Weekly as one of America's wisest, wittiest and most wicked writers, and the worthy successor to David Sedaris. For more, please visit www.waderouse.com or www.wadeswriters.com.