As if in slumber, Stonecrop Ledge has stood, timeless, at the edge of the village of Middlebury. Its windows, long shuttered, clapboards in much need of paint and its crumbling stone walls, might suggest a story ended. But for Randall and Kathleen Brisson, and indeed for the house itself, this is a tale not finished but merely paused. 

Off the paved road, across the creek, approaching the maintained fields of Finch Hollow, we pass the single-file line of wolf trees.