Forty-four years in the forest

It was 1982 when journalist Jan Goodwin first found the Upper Delaware.

At the time, Jan had no interest in finding a weekend home for herself. It was a friend who pulled her up to the area, asking her to go along on a house-hunting expedition after seeing the region advertised on the cover of New York Magazine.

Then, as her friend was talking with a real estate agent in a Callicoon office, a picture of an 1800s Milanville cottage caught Jan’s eye. At $24,000 (remember, it was 1982), the price was right, and she bought it.

That purchase started a 44-year-long connection to the Upper Delaware, one that’s ending in 2026, as she returns to her home country of England.

Moving homes

The Milanville house served for Jan as a weekend home, though some renovations were needed to make it fit for the purpose.

When she came to the house, she realized it had no insulation, an orange shag carpet and faux wood paneling. “I turned it back to its era,” she says. “I think the house was very happy with it.”

Thirty-something years on, Jan was ready to leave New York City and live in the Upper Delaware full time. She was negotiating a price on a 250-year-old house in Callicoon when a friend suggested she look elsewhere, at a Beach Lake home, formerly owned by the sculptor Raymond Rocklin, that had just gone up for sale.

“I said, ‘It’s a modern house, I’m not going to be interested,’” Jan relates. “She said, ‘Look at it.’”

Jan ended up being glad she did. In addition to the money saved (she paid a third of the real estate taxes she would have if she’d bought a house in New York, she says), she found a space she could make her own, while maintaining the memories of the sculptor’s abode it had been.

Raymond’s studio space, a 23-foot-by-23-foot space with 10-foot-high ceilings and a concrete floor, became Jan’s family room, complete with radiant heating in the flooring. (It was destined to be a television room, before changing technology drove her to a couch with her iPad.) Raymond used to have his sculptures out on the grounds of the house, there for display; Jan brought in topsoil and turned the space into gardens, complete with fruit and fig trees.

There and back again

As of the time of publication, Jan has left the home behind, headed for England with the page turned on the Upper Delaware chapter of her life.

“What I am going to miss is my walk-in closet,” she says, referring to that feature in her Beach Lake home.

She grew up in England, and came to America at age 29. Her departure from the Upper Delaware brings her back to her home country 50 years later.

At the time, Jan says, “I was just coming for a year. Then I thought, ‘This is a beautiful big country,’ and I love your topography.”

In the Upper Delaware, in particular, the natural world has been a particular source of enjoyment.

“I will miss terribly the bears,” says Jan. “In England, you get Beatrix Potter-size animals.”

In addition, she says, she’s “fascinated” by the deer, which, while present in England, are mostly confined to royal estates. “I’ve been watching them hunker down in the snow around my property and I almost want to invite them in, because I feel bad for them.”

When she got the house in Milanville, she was located directly opposite the Calkins Creek, and only half a mile from the Delaware River. An avid kayaker, she appreciated the lakes and the rivers in the area which made it convenient to get out on the water.

Of course, there were some things the area could not provide. In returning to England, she’ll be landing in a city of 100,000; she’s looking forward to easier access to the finer things in life, like the opera, lectures and ethnic cuisine, which aren’t always close to hand in rural New York and Pennsylvania.

There are other benefits, too, in moving away from America. She recently had a surgery that went poorly, one she’s hoping to find better help for from European physicians. The political situation in the States concerns her, too.

“You can’t be weak in America,” she says. “You won’t survive.”

A place of peace

In the course of her career as a journalist, Jan traveled across the world, covering war and unrest in far-flung countries. She was the first female journalist to cover the war in Afghanistan from the ground; following her work there, she started and ran a multi-million dollar humanitarian aid program in the country.

Her time spent abroad made the peace she found in the Upper Delaware all the more valuable.

“When I used to drive up at weekends to Milanville, the traffic would be awful,” she remembers. “You’d cross the George Washington Bridge and it would be bumper to bumper traffic. And in the end, I stopped coming up on Friday nights because the traffic was so weird; I’d come up on Saturday morning. But then I would get to my house and I’d turn off the engine and I’d open the windows, and I’d hear the Calkins Creek and I’d hear the birds and it was like an antidepressant. It was incredible; it was very peaceful.”

“And then I spent so much time in war zones…” She trails off, pauses. “So you need to have the other side of it,” she says.