Explaining the Barn Barrage

The New Englander walked into my California home, glanced around--upstairs and down--and said: “I had no idea you were so crazy for barns.”

I did not deny it, but how could he know? My house is modern.

“Look at your art,” he went on. “There are barns in every room.”

He pointed to a barn in the background of an acrylic landscape of the lesser Andrew Wyeth sort, a barn that was only incidental. He pounced on a large mixed-media work that featured a stark white horse barn with empty windows--a work I had bought on an autumn afternoon in Woods Hole, Mass., while waiting for a ferry to Martha’s Vineyard.

He led me to an oil painting by a Polish artist, which I thought of as a wintry study of barren trees and angles, a moody work in whites, browns and blacks. I found it at a gallery in Geneva. Sure enough, there is a building in it, but I swear it’s a cottage.

His next target was a sand casting by Charles Faust of San Diego, an ethereal white-on-white work that I treasure for its abstract roots and full moon. Yes, there’s a hint of a structure on the folds of sand.

Finally the New Englander pointed to a small wooden object the size of a rural postbox, a work of gleaming pear wood and cherry that stands on round brass feet. “That obviously is a barn--a carved, toy barn.”

“Wrong,” I said stubbornly. “That is a doghouse--an antique French doghouse that I bought in Asprey’s in London on Christmas Eve and paid far too much for and have never regretted it.”

He smiled at my mad confession.

Still, while my friend saw some barns that weren’t there, his premise was correct: I love barns and covered bridges and autumn leaves. And I love seeing them together along the byways of New England.

The most awesome barn I’ve visited is the 1826 Shaker masterpiece in Hancock Village, just outside Pittsfield in western Massachusetts.

This round stone barn is bigger than life, rising in simple glory amid rolling hills. The functional beauty of its architecture meant that wagons entered the vast top level to empty hay into a central haymow. Stables radiated from a manger at mid-level so that one person could feed the herd. Manure pits were below.

Hancock was an active Shaker community from 1781 to 1960; now it is a museum village that tells the story of the “Shaking Quakers” who came to America from England and practiced communal living and hard work.

There are barns for all seasons in New England, but autumn is my favorite time to ramble along those roads.

Golden birch leaves were splattering down as I drove into Brattleboro, Vt., and saw a grand old barn of rain-darkened wood. Light streamed from its open doors and from the hayloft above.

This, for me, was Vermont: substantial, proud, inviting. I slowed in the dusk to read the sign: FITNESS BARN. Inside were shiny exercise bikes and body-building machines. So much for fat cows and tradition.

New England’s graceful barns house more than stock or feed, tractors or trucks. Some have become country stores fragrant with apples, maple syrup and extra-sharp Vermont Cheddar cheese. Others have been restored and converted as restaurants, wayside inns, doctors’ or dentists’ offices, craft centers and antique shops.

The ultimate spiffed-up model is The Inn at Sawmill Farm near West Dover, Vt. With hand-hewn timbers and a decorator’s flair, it is a place of studied elegance. With swimming pool, skiing and golf nearby, it seems more country club than country.

Barns have been turned into weekend homes and studios for artists, sculptors and violin makers. The pale sun glints on skylights and solar panels atop pitched roofs.

The New Hampshire town of North Conway has a pleasant setting east of the streams and the green and crimson forests along Kancamagus Highway.

But scenery is not what brings visitors by the busload. North Conway’s streets are chockablock with factory outlets that offer brand-name discount merchandise. One of the brighter cut-rate clusters is called the Red Barn.

Last October at the Old Tavern Inn of Grafton, Vt., a Colonial hostelry of immense charm and high-back rocking chairs, I had two questions:

First, where were some good hiking paths? Answer: Try the cross-country ski trails of winter.

Second, where was a public telephone?

The woman at the reception desk pointed over her shoulder and smiled. “The phone’s in the barn.”

But of course. And so is the taproom.