17,000 Books and a Bunch of Goats

I was not even aware of Carl Sandburg's home being in North Carolina until it was suggested as a destination for our day together with my cousin Doreen and her husband David.  The home is on a huge property in Flat Rock, North Carolina, tucked within the hills and simply stunning in its beauty.  

We arrived at "Connemara" around 2 p.m. and had to walk a mighty steep hill to get to the large white house, which overlooked a large pond.

Pondside

View from below

View from the house

One of the most interesting facts about this home, and the thing that makes it so fascinating, is that shortly after Sandburg died in 1967, his wife and daughters sold it to the United States as a historic site, taking only their personal effects with them.  Inside the home are the 17,000 books he owned, his record collection, and every stitch of furniture.  Below is a photo from his wife's office with the calendar still set at July 1967, the month he died.  His guitar is pictured below that, with a bust of a young Abraham Lincoln.  Sandberg did not just write poetry, but is known for his several volume biography of Lincoln, as well as fiction writing.

As the story goes, Sandburg and his wife lived in Michigan. But in the 1940's, they decided to move somewhere else because his wife Paula was deep into raising goats, and she wanted an environment more conducive to her goat-raising and breeding activities.  Carl could work anywhere, so they picked up and moved, taking every one of the 17,000 books with them.

The picture below is Sandberg's writing room. He propped his typewriter on an orange crate because he said, "If Grant could run his campaign from an orange crate, I can write about it on one."  His advise to writer, which we heard him say on an introductory video is "Just put one word down after another.  It is when you try to do two or three at a time that it gets difficult."

His wife's bedroom.  Doreen reflected in the mirror

Pathway to the goat barn

The house itself has a wonderful layout, and the grounds include gardens, a caretakers house, and several out buildings and barns.  There are many hiking trails which are definitely used, as we saw many people on the trails, even on a hot and sticky Carolina day.

Sandburg had a rock outcropping he often sat on to write.  That was probably my favorite place. 

 "It is necessary now and then for a man to go away by himself and experience loneliness; to sit on a rock in the forest and ask of himself, 'Who am I, and where have I been, and where am I going?'...If one is not careful, one allows diversions to take up one's time -- the stuff of life."

Doreen giving perspective to the outcropping

An inspiring day