Well, I won't be the first - I remember the novel by Stef Penney, 'The Tenderness of Wolves' set in a bitter Canadian winter so powerful it was almost a character in the novel: people were rather amazed to find that she'd done all the research online. I think that's perfectly fair. What would not be fair would be to use someone else's work of fiction for the same purpose - facts and images, yes, someone else's fictional use of their work, no.
It was very much helped for me that the farmhouse Robert Frost bought in June 1915 still stands. It is now called The Frost Place and is a museum and centre for poetry and Frost Studies.
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| Genuine or not, this image appears everywhere |
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| Photo-Jeannine Atkins'journal I'm inclined to think, though, that you gain most from visiting writers' locations by looking at the view from their windows, or in this case, the porch. That's certainly what they would have spent a great deal of time doing. 
An extract from the novel:
'In July the Frosts moved in to the farm.
Robert and Elinor were ready to meet the removers who brought their long-stored
goods on a wagon. All their old possessions from the Derry farm piled higgledy-piggledy
in the kitchen, and the men clumping about heavily upstairs could not spoil
their elation. Elinor did become thoughtful as she looked out of the kitchen
window: how well she would come to know that view, those tall weeds where the
kitchen water was thrown out, over the years ahead. Many years maybe, even
though they were not so young and all their long past years were piled up
there, in the chaos of the kitchen at her back.
‘My, am I glad to have a home of my own
again,’ Elinor said.
‘Yes, and such freedom – our own birch
woods. No one to tell us what we can and can’t do, where we can and can’t go. I
couldn’t have taken that one moment longer. But we had some good times in
England, didn’t we, Elly?’
‘Well, some, I guess.’
‘And it’s turned out for the best, you
must admit that.’
‘I know.’
A few days later they moved in with the
children, the younger three running off together to the Hyla brook. Lesley
climbed Ore Hill and after a while ran down towards them.
‘I’ve found a great crop of blueberries
all round the wood over there – do come see.’
So they picked blueberries, they fixed
up the house and swam in the brook that hot summer. Robert and the children
went back to playing baseball. It was Carol, at fourteen, who was to work the
farm: Robert believed that a son must earn his father’s love but his mother’s
is rightly there for free.
Robert himself began to be busy with
writing, organising his work and with Poetry Society matters. The little
post-office at Franconia, where their mail was retained for them, had never
known such mail as arrived daily for Mr Robert Frost.
But Elinor was not wholly content for
long.
Robert would sit out on the
white-painted porch, gazing into the autumn morning. He liked to see the mist
clear and the mountains take up their true shapes while the last shreds of mist
remained only in the deepest valleys.
‘He’s watching the dragon come out of
the Notch,’ the children said. It was the Franconia Notch, the saddle of the
mountain facing them. He had always believed that you could not get too much
winter in winter, something he’d missed in England. He was beginning to wonder,
though. Would they pay for their mountain view with too harsh and bitter weather?
Would his plan for orchards fail? One late frost would kill the early blossom. '
Robert both composed new poems and revised for publication the work he had done in England. He published Mountain Interval in 1916. It contains many of his best known shorter poems. The Exposed Nest, Locked Out, the Sound of Trees and Putting in the Seed are all Leddington and Ryton work. The 'tricky' Road Less Travelled is part of the collection, and Out, Out, The Hill Wife, The Oven Bird.
 Published Henry Holt, 1916
The Frost Copyright has to be respected but I am sure these poems, over 75 years old, are out of copyright. Here is ' Birches' which I think is Franconia inspired.
Birches
When I see birches bend to
left and right
Across the lines of straighter
darker trees,
I like to think some boy's
been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them
down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you
must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter
morning
After a rain. They click upon
themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn
many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes
their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes
them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on
the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to
sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of
heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the
withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break;
though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never
right themselves:
You may see their trunks
arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing
their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees
that throw their hair
Before them over their heads
to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when
Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact
about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some
boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch
the cows—
Some boy too far from town to
learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he
found himself,
Summer or winter, and could
play alone.
One by one he subdued his
father's trees
By riding them down over and
over again
Until he took the stiffness
out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not
one was left
For him to conquer. He learned
all there was
To learn about not launching
out too soon
And so not carrying the tree
away
Clear to the ground. He always
kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing
carefully
With the same pains you use to
fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above
the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet
first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through
the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger
of birches.
And so I dream of going back
to be.
It's when I'm weary of
considerations,
And life is too much like a
pathless wood
Where your face burns and
tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye
is weeping
From a twig's having lashed
across it open.
I'd like to get away from
earth awhile
And then come back to it and
begin over.
May no fate willfully
misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and
snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the
right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely
to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a
birch tree,
And climb black branches up a
snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till
the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me
down again.
That would be good both going
and coming back.
One could do worse than be a
swinger of birches.
 Has anyone been to the Frost Place? It would be so interesting to have comments from you. |
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