Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 15, 1995 TAG: 9501270006
SECTION: TRAVEL PAGE: G-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: STEVE SILK THE HARTFORD COURANT
DATELINE: GARRISON, N.Y. LENGTH: Long
There's also Manitoga, an unsung expanse that owes nothing to Europe, a place that unabashedly celebrates individuality and personal expression, a place that owes everything to an American eccentric - designer Russel Wright.
Today, most visitors can get only a glimpse of Wright's unique, cliffside home, Dragon Rock, which is closed save for occasional or special tours. But the 80 acres of land surrounding the glass-and-granite manse are laced with hiking trails open to the public. These walks take you through the woods, but not just any woods. Manitoga is a created landscape, reclaimed from a plundered hillside once gouged with quarries and stripped by loggers.
Long before ecosystem was an ecology buzzword, Wright sensed that the ravaged landscape surrounding his weekend home in Garrison had once been a distinctive community of plants and animals. Eventually he set about re-creating that landscape, and devoted more than 30 years to clearing brush; transplanting mountain laurels, ferns and dogwoods; making paths; creating waterfalls. Like an architect, he created a series of forest rooms connected by woodsy hallways. Manitoga was bequeathed to the Nature Conservancy upon Wright's death in 1976.
Wright's efforts foreshadowed the recent movement toward using exclusively native plants in landscape design.
To help others enjoy this restored landscape, Wright followed old animal trails and transformed them into paths and theme walks. There was Morning Path, an eastbound trek through a hemlock forest fringed with light from the rising sun; and Sunset Path, a westward stroll featuring a strategic sit-down place for watching the sun go down. Winter Walk threads evergreens, and Springtime Path shows off the wildflowers blooming in that season.
He shaped Manitoga - the word, loosely derived from Algonquin, means ``Place of the Great Spirit'' - to celebrate harmony with the natural world. He hoped it would one day be a place where people would come to lie in the woods, hug trees, wade through streams, scuffle through fallen leaves, meditate or just sing. Today, it is.
During spring, grab one of the cherry walking sticks kept in a bin by the trailhead at Mary's Meadow, and set out. Past the giant oak, wineberry canes and flowering dogwoods scattered through the field, a well-marked path cracks through an opening in the forest wall.
One of the most popular walks is Deer Run. Its less than mile-long length passes beneath a canopy of huge hemlocks, along a slope of rocky glacial debris, through a place Wright called the Four Corners Forest Room, past a four-acre field of laurel, tall tulip poplars and multitrunked oak, and across a log bridge leading to a marshy bog crossed by stepping stones.
For more dramatic vistas, continue on to the nearby Appalachian Trail, or take the Chestnut Oak Trail, where carefully cleared openings offer a chance to survey a scenic stretch of the Hudson as it reaches from Bear Mountain in the south to West Point up north. In late summer, the blueberry bushes along the way are heavy with fruit - if you manage to beat the blue jays to it.(Begin optional trim)
Manitoga is made for exploring. The path to Lost Pond, for example, doesn't quite lead there. To find the pond, which dries up in summer, you'll have to do a little bushwhacking.
Which is only fitting. After all, Wright's discovery of Manitoga's riches required plenty of pathfinding. (End optional trim)
Wright found fame and eventual fortune as a designer. He had an uncanny eye for a style that might be dubbed ``informal modern,'' and during a 40-year career that began in the 1930s, his voracious creativity gave birth to new shapes for everything from chairs and lamps and radios to dinner plates and silverware.
Today, some of his chairs are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and his American Modern dinnerware is a collectors' item. And Manitoga is now a sort of museum of its own, an independent nonprofit corporation promoting public understanding of Wright's concept of design with nature.
Wright was a modernist in a sort of sci-fi '50s mode, and he and his wife, Anne, urged Americans to cast off the cultural remnants of their European heritage and forge an informal but efficient lifestyle that was uniquely American.
To help point the way, the couple collaborated on a ``Guide to Easier Living,'' a book that featured charts, diagrams and details on such topics as childproofing a room, the most efficient way to wash dishes and the ``scientific'' method for making a bed in 2 minutes and 45 seconds. His hints on decorating embraced the new materials of the times; Wright was a proponent of home decor that featured fluorescent lights, Formica and other materials that might be better suited to a supermarket.
Comically, Dragon Rock, the home Wright designed and built at Manitoga, would induce apoplexy in anyone devoted to the machinelike domestic efficiency he and his wife advocated.
Even Wright described the home he began building more than a decade after buying the property as cavelike. The rough stone floor is reportedly a bear to vacuum, and water - as well as the occasional animal - creeps into the house.
The inside and outside spaces blur together - woods and rocks outdoors are reflected in large interior mirrors. Ferns and plants grow inside and outside the house; hemlock needles are pressed into plaster walls; butterflies and fern leaves are encased in plaster panels.
There's no denying Dragon Rock's stark and dramatic beauty, but even so, the house is subservient to its surroundings, like a bit player in a theatrical extravaganza.
In fact, were it not for the house's trim white gutters, Dragon Rock would be all but invisible - its surroundings are too spectacular. It's hard to resist gazing at the waterfall splashing into the blue waters of what was once the old quarry.
For information about visiting Manitoga and about special programs at the nonprofit facility, write Manitoga, Garrison, NY 10524, or call (914) 424-3812.
by CNB