Connemara Estate: Carl Sandburg's Paradise

As we were meandering along the state highways and local roads toward Flat Rock, North Carolina, I was enjoying the beauty of the rolling hills and the radiant yellows, oranges, reds, and golds of the fall foliage in the bright morning sun, and I kept thinking to myself, "Carl Sandburg? Did Carl Sandburg really live out here?"

I had always associated American poet and writer Carl Sandburg with the Midwest, specifically the Chicago area. Wasn't Sandburg a city boy? After all, he had lived in the Chicago suburbs for a number of years and had written many poems about the Midwest and the people who lived there. Didn't he write about smoke stacks and trains and the laborers in the stockyards?

But then, if ever there was a countryside worthy of claiming a poet, it would be the area around Flat Rock.

My initials thoughts of surprise, then, when I heard that Sandburg spent the last twenty-two years of his life residing at the Connemara Estate in Flat Rock, North Carolina, had turned into, "Ah but of course." Wanting to find out more as to what was so appealing to Sandburg about Connemara, we stopped there on our way home after a vacation in the Appalachian Mountains.

What we saw was breathtaking!

Sandburg and his wife had lived at Connemara from 1945 until his death in 1967. The estate was a working farm with more than 200 acres, and Sandburg's wife raised goats and ran an award-winning goat dairy.

While Sandburg's wife ran the dairy, Sandburg himself stayed busy with writing poetry, stories for children, recordings, lectures, essays, and several parts of his multi-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln, for which Sandburg won the Pulitzer Prize.

Sandburg's home was filled with more than 10,000 books. In fact, more bracing had to be added underneath the house to help support the weight of all his books!

The home was not luxurious by any stretch, but it was comfortable with plenty of windows overlooking the estate. Sandburg had a study that looked like it could have been anybody's study, but there was something magical about knowing that he had penned some of his most famous work from that room, that desk, and that chair.

The estate still is home to many friendly goats, descendants of the goats that Sandburg's wife had raised.

The serenity and beauty of Connemara would certainly have been a marked contrast to the daily life that Sandburg experienced in Chicago. No wonder he stayed here.

Flat Rock is an easy drive from Asheville, North Carolina. Plan on spending a minimum of three hours at Connemara, especially if you will be walking around the property.

This was enjoyable for the whole family and it was time well spent.