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апшим* У Л visit to Connemara in Flat Rock will bring the character of legendary poet Carl Sandburg to life. By Myra S. Weatherly ii his only novel, Remembrance Rock, ( lari Sandburg wrote: "... lot it could he ,i place to come .iiid remember." Nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Flat Rock is Sand¬ burg's beloved home. Connemara, whci e the prolific writer spent the last 22 years of his long and productive life. What (letter place to conic and remember the lamed poet, historian, minstrel, one-time political activist. Pulil/ei Pri/c-winnei and biographer of Abraham Lincoln. A winding driveway banked with toweling pine trees leads to the tall, white-pill. tied house, standing ma¬ jestic ally on a steeply sloping hill, over¬ looking its own morning reflection in the lake below. looking out from the broad рок h with its magnificent vista o! dusky blue mountain peaks, Sand¬ burg's wile, I ill. in. often exclaimed to guests, "We didn't just buy 240 acres when we bought Connemara, we bought a million acres of sky. too." Christopher Gustavus Memminger of Charleston. South Carolina, who latei Itcc. une the Confederacy’s trea- suiv secretary under Jefferson Davis, huili the threc-siorv. 22-room house as a sumrnei home around 1838. South Carolina textile tycoon Ellison Smythc. who later owned the house, named the faun Connemara because its verdant mountains and meadows resembled his ancestr.il homeland of Connemara. Ire¬ land In 1945, the f)7-year-old best-selling author moved his wife, three daughters, two grandchildren. more than 10.000 books, 200 goats and all of bis family’s pei- N.Mil Omlmi riwcl it.l Гантт by Cl.y IMu •ИХ* »«•*<• towUty Ы N.hIIh(* Ш.1, sonal belongings from their home in Michigan to Flat Rock. The farm had everything the Sandburgs desired, includ¬ ing a gentle climate, ample pasture land for their Chikaiiiing goats and seclusion for writing. Newspapers described their new home as an "historic estate.” Indeed, it is impres¬ sive with its sweeping pastures, lakes and mountain views. Yet the lifestyle the Sand¬ burgs led at Connemara was as basic and The Slatc/Mny 1995 36 simple as the' one they had dreamed about before their mar i iage in 1908, The young couple had written to each other of thcii plans to live in the woods in a shack with a roof ami foui walls plus “three chairs (one for com¬ pany), a hat rack, a hreadhox. a bowl for wildflowers and a coffee pot." Named a National Historic Site in 1968. Connemara, a striking mon¬ ument to Sandburg, maintains its timeless integrity and remains vir- tuallv unchanged with furnishings and personal effects intact. The National Park Service opened the site to the public in 1974. As early as 1922. the Illinois native had been dubbed "Poet of the Peo¬ ple." After his death, his mountain home became the "people's house.” According to Warren Weber, Con¬ nemara's curator, more than 80,000 people tout the main house each year, with 45,000 making the pil¬ grimage through many of the 20-odd farm buildings and along the wind¬ ing trails leading to the top of Big Glassy Mountain with its panoramic view of the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountain ranges Today, visitors exploring the spa¬ cious house will note that almost even room is lined with floor-to-cciling 1хюк- shclvcs filled with thousands of books. Mounds of vintage magazines such as Ufe, I . Saturday Evening Pmt, Collins, Sat ton¬ al Geographic, most with dates in the 1950s and 1960s. fill hallways, nooks and n an¬ nies. and overflow to the Swedish I louse, a building on the grounds so named for its unusual trim. The rooms, with thcii cluttered, lived-