Fernwood Chalet

About this property

Snow drifts past the string lights as you sink into the hot tub off the main bedroom, pines black against the sky above you. On 32 acres in Ashland, the quiet feels complete.

Inside, the great room rises to a high pine ceiling, and an enormous window frames the forest, catching the sunset over dinner. A wood-burning fireplace warms the open kitchen, stocked for real cooking from the cast iron skillet to the Nespresso. Four bedrooms and two baths sleep eight, and downstairs a projector, a custom bar and a fern-painted mudroom make a second den for movie nights after skiing.

Mornings belong to the private trails, wide and easy through the woods, where deer step out between the trees. Later, hammocks swing on a grassy hill, the infrared sauna house waits across the lawn, and the fire pit with its Adirondack chairs turns into s'mores under more stars than the city ever shows.

Windham Mountain is nine minutes away and Hunter about eighteen, with the restaurants of downtown Windham a short drive off. In warmer months a nearby lake offers a beach, paddle boards and canoes, and the drive back winds into the woods as the light goes gold over the mountains.