It was 1989 when a friend called.  There was a funky cottage near Woodstock that she'd previously rented but couldn't use that summer.  It was so special she wanted to pass it on.  "It has good karma," I remember her telling me.

The cottage was located on a road named after the husband-and-wife artist couple who originally owned the cottage but were long dead.  You walked down an ivy-covered path while holding onto a rope railing.  The front door was cerulean blue and the rest of the house dark brown wood.  Entering through a screened-in porch you faced empty wine bottles standing on a ledge and a horseshoe over the door.  Mismatched dishes were stacked on open shelves in the kitchen.  The one bedroom downstairs had a mattress that sloped gully-like down the middle.  The house was filled with the paintings and sculptures of the couple, who had been part of the Maverick Art Colony, an offshoot of Byrdcliffe.

Everything belonging to the couple remained - rustic furniture, musty novels, even an old-fashioned coffee grinder, the scent of grounds still lingering - as if they had simply stepped out and would return momentarily.  The place radiated warmth and, to me, conjured stories.  There was no question, I had to rent the place.

Colorful art postcards were thumb-tacked to a wall in the kitchen.  Picasso's languid and erotic "Sleeping Peasants," Matisse's cut-out "Jazz" with the vibrant magenta horse, and more.  The cards had been sent by the husband, who was in Paris for a summer, to his wife, who was staying at the cottage.  "Darling," began all the cards, "I'm thinking about our last night together with you in my arms.  I miss you more than words."  I'd read a card a day to draw out their story.  "Work goes slow," he said in another.  "Distracted by thoughts of you..."  "With everlasting love and devotion," he signed another.

There was something magical about my summer of the postcards.  Getting out of the city every weekend to the country was a revelation in itself, but being in this house, surrounded by an artistic, passionate aura, was another matter altogether.  A single writer, I was looking for love and a good story, and was hopeful that I'd find both.  I was falling in love, not with a person, but with a place and a lifestyle.

Much later I learned that the artist husband, the summer he wrote those postcards, had thrown himself into the Seine, killing himself.  I felt shocked, and utterly betrayed.  The stories I'd created were just that - stories.  It had never occurred to me to write a tragic ending.

Little did I know that, despite the sadness that now colored my memories, 10 years later I'd buy my own house and move up here full time, beginning a new chapter of my life.  But that's another story.

Marlene Adelstein is a freelance book editor and writer living in Rosendale.  Visit her Web site at www.fixyourbook.com.