After 5: Medellin

We took two tours with Context in Rome and both of our guides were not only exceptionally knowledgeable, they have been doing this exact tour for over 20 years. On a bright and early Saturday morning, we braved the crowds at the Vatican and met our docent, Cecilia, an art historian and a native Roman with a Master’s degree in Medieval and Renaissance Art from the Sapienza University of Rome. Some 30,000 to 35,000 people visit the Vatican every day and today was no different. Cecilia was a marvel to watch as she weaved in an out of the people to wax lyrically on the long map hall, maps of Italy created in the 1500s, only open to the public in the 1700s. Outside, overlooking St. Peter’s Basilica, she sat us down and went over all the panels we were going to see in the Sistine Chapel, a place where no one can talk. But first we would visit the dreamy Raphael rooms, most striking the first room depicting his portrayal of philosophy, religion, justice, and truth. Look closely and you can see both Raphael and Michelangelo, a great inspiration to Raphael, when remarkably they both were working at the Vatican at the same time, 1508. It’s hard not to be blown away by Michelangelo’s brilliance when peering up in the Sistine Chapel, only to end at Bernini’s masterpiece, the largest church in the world, St. Peter’s Basilica. Wowza. No wonder Cecilia’s been doing this exact tour for over 2 decades. Everything else pales in comparison.
“Every middle-aged man who revisits his birthplace after a few years of absence looks upon another landscape than that which formed the theater of his youthful toils and pleasures,” said George Perkins Marsh in 1847 in a speech at the Agricultural Society of Rutland County, Vermont. Growing up in Woodstock, Vermont, Marsh had seen three-quarters of Vermont’s forest cover destroyed for potash, lumber, crops, and pasture. 17 years later, Marsh would delve further into these egregious practices in his epic book on the American environment, Man and Nature. Reflecting on what he had seen, Marsh wrote about a concept of sound husbandry where men could mend nature.
A generation younger, Frederick Billings was deeply touched by Marsh’s writings and, in 1869, purchased Marsh’s childhood home in order to make the estate a model of progressive farming and forestry. Beginning in the 1870s, Billings designed a forest with numerous tree plantations and constructed a 20-mile network of carriage roads to showcase his work. On the lowlands, Billings developed a state-of-the-art dairy. In 1982, Billings granddaughter, Mary French Rockefeller and her husband, the conservationist Laurance Rockefeller, established the farmland as the Billings Farm & Museum. In June 1998, the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller Mansion and the surrounding forest became the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park.
Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller is the first unit of the National Park System to focus on the theme of conservation history and stewardship, the main concern of Marsh and Billings. With their emphasis on the careful cooperation of man and nature, they had the utmost desire to pass land on, undiminished, even enhanced, to the next generation and generations to come. The Park Service will continue a program of forest management on the site, offering workshops on how to use the forest most efficiently.
Tour the exhibits in the Carriage Barn, then hit the carriage path trails like my family did this past weekend through Billings’ dream 550-acre forest. 11 of Billings’ original plantings remain including groves of Norwegian spruce and Scottish Pine from the 1880s, mixed in with the an indigenous Vermont forest of white pine, red pine, and maples. The longest carriage path trail circles around The Pogue, a shimmering body of water backed by the foliage of Mt. Tom.
Home to the San Antonio branch of the Culinary Institute of America, James Beard award-winning restaurants, and a chic boutique hotel built from the remnants of the Pearl Brewery called Hotel Emma, the Pearl is my favorite neighborhood in the city. This summer, the Pearl will be home to Olé, San Antonio, a series of events highlighting music, dance, art, architecture, and food that will celebrate the city’s tri-centennial and its Spanish Heritage. Hotel Emma is getting in on the action by hosting renowned chefs from Spain that will spotlight one particular product like tinned fish, Jamón (Spanish ham), and cheese. These so-called Monograph Sessions will conclude with dinner at the hotel’s signature restaurant, Supper. Hotel Emma is also offering a special rate now through September 16. The special, 300 years, 300 dollars, features rates starting at $300, plus complimentary valet parking.
Already on a high from meeting 85-year-old Jimmy Russell, the master distiller at Wild Turkey the past 65 years, I took to the backcountry roads and was soon smitten by the scenery. My trusty Waze led me through fields of Kentucky bluegrass shimmering under the midday Autumn sun, graceful and strong thoroughbred horses roaming the hillside, and a maze of white picket fences that seem to meander haphazardly toward the horizon. I pull over under the shade of a maple and its last tinges of colorful foliage and take it all in, gulping deep breaths of serenity, before continuing on to my next distillery stop on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.
One of my favorite topics over the years has been the unique opportunity to step foot in a renowned artist’s home and studio, and then tour the surrounding landscape that figured prominently in many of their most famous works. This includes Winslow Homer’s Prouts Neck, Maine; Edward Hopper’s Truro, Massachusetts; and J Alden Weir’s Wilton, Connecticut home, one of only two national parks in America dedicated to an artist (the other being The Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park in Cornish, New Hampshire). So I was delighted to see that author Valerie Balint has written an entire book on the subject, in the recently released Guide to Historic Artists’ Homes & Studios, published by The National Trust for Historic Preservation. Homer, Hopper, and Weir are all featured in the book along with many other must-see stops like Georgia O’Keeffe’s Abiquiú, New Mexico home and studio, the Grant Woods studio in Cedar Rapids, and the Thomas Hart Benton home in Kansas City. Then there are the lesser known gems like Chesterwood in the Berkshires, the summer home and studio of lauded American sculptor Daniel Chester French, best known as the man who created the Lincoln Memorial. Nearby, you can pop into Bauhaus-inspired Frelinghuyson Morris House & Studio, the home of Suzy Frelinghuyson and George L.K. Morris, painters and collectors of abstract art. If you plan on cruising around America the next year or two, this is one book I’d have in my glove compartment.