I knelt on the hearth that night, and my knees told me all about it, and the loose stone came up on the third try, and the wax-papered letter was still there, just as Nora showed me in 1962, a letter from the State of New York dated 1911 with the governors own signature, and I read the last line by firelight and laughed until I cried.
The ranger had held out his letter and told me the state was acquiring the private in-holdings on the lake, that Noras familys title was questionable because the land was forest preserve before 1911, that the camp would be state land one way or another.
He did not know what the state itself signed in 1911.
Noras grandfather did not squat on forest-preserve land, he was granted this parcel by the State of New York in 1911, in a patent signed by the governor, which lawfully conveyed it out of the preserve and into the family forever, meaning the state gave this land away with its own hand and cannot now pretend the title is questionable.
Nora planted the lilacs by the door, and her grandfather built the camp in 1911, the very year the state conveyed the parcel to him, and Nora kept the governors patent under the hearthstone and showed it to me the first summer we were together, in 1962, so that one of us would always know where the proof was.
A patent signed by the governor in 1911 is the state conveying the land itself. There is nothing questionable about it. The state cannot take back through a vague title challenge what it deliberately, lawfully granted over a century ago.
I had a lawyer in Saranac Lake confirm it, and he said the 1911 patent was as clean as title gets, and that the ranger, or whoever sent him, had simply gambled that an old widower would not have it.
When the ranger came back, I did not argue. I handed him a certified copy of the 1911 patent with the governors signature and I said, you told me Id get a letter from Albany. I already have one, from 1911, signed by the governor, giving this land to Noras family. The title is not questionable. The state gave it away itself. Youll expand your preserve around my lilacs.
He read the governors signature and left. The state acquired the other in-holdings and left mine alone.
State land one way or another, he had said. It was not. Nora knew all along, and she kept the 1911 letter under the hearth and showed a young man where it was in 1962, and sixty years later, on my bad knees by the fire, it was still there, still signed by a governor, still keeping her lilacs ours.