By Kate Abney

Driving, windows down, through the Alabama woods on a Friday in August, the air is warm on my face as I wind through the loblolly pines. In the late‑afternoon light, I catch slivers of water flashing through breaks in the trees—so fleeting, they could be the silver wings of liminal beings hiding along the periphery. Knowing my friend Blake Weeks, this arrival sequence feels as if by design.

He’s invited me for a weekend away at Lake Martin, where I will finally experience the retreat he conceived with his partner, architect Bobby McAlpine, months before the house debuts to the world in the pages of a magazine.

Reaching the cul‑de‑sac at the end of the road, my car’s wheels turn down the ribbon drive, coming to rest atop the reclaimed timber motor court. Reminiscent of a Tudor cottage and crowned with a roof of clipped thatch—trimmed as if by manicure scissors—the house seems almost sentient. It rests a foot or two below the motor court, giving the impression it has been sinking into this ground for decades. My car door shuts with a hollow clap that reverberates through the hushed landscape.

Flinging my weekend duffle across my shoulder, my bare legs brush past the ornamental grasses that line the boardwalk. Like tiny sentinels, bright green anoles creep to the tips of their swaying blades to soak up the final beams of afternoon sun. Already, I can feel something shift within me, but it will take the rest of the weekend to understand what.

When you’ve been writing about Bobby’s books, collections and houses for more than a decade, your mind begins to inhabit the work. You think you understand it—but you don’t, not really, until you’ve spent the night inside it.

Over the years, I’ve been grateful many times over for Bobby’s time and generosity. But this weekend is different: I’m arriving as a friend, with a duffle instead of a notebook.

I first interviewed Bobby in 2012, when he released his second furniture collection with Holland MacRae. I’d spent that whole day working in the upstairs reading room of a tiny, century-old library in Saluda, North Carolina. By the time I made it to the parking lot, the sun had set. Just as I clicked on my headlights, my phone rang.

“Is now a good time?”

For the next 15 minutes, this young writer sat motionless in the dark, perched over my steering wheel, listening with bated breath as one of the South’s greatest vernacular architects answered each question with the poetic overtures anyone who’s spoken to Bobby will recognize.

But in a blink, years have passed, and I find myself in the thick of this Alabama forest, where the compound before me unfolds as a sequence of nine structures. Most are linked together by breezeways of varying lengths, a low field gate marking each threshold with a latch. With the main house to the left, guest quarters to the right and—straight ahead—a dining porch pointing toward the lake, the property reads almost like a procession. With the flip of a latch, one gate swings open, and I pivot toward iron double doors leading to mirror‑image guest suites.

Choosing the room facing the water, I drop my belongings in an almost monastic chamber styled with curious objects and somber appointments. The moody hideaway is replete with Blake’s telltale spiritual mischief, but also thoughtful touches—like the tiered stand on the bathroom vanity perfect for perching my jars of sunscreen and serums.

Automatically, I let out a deep exhale, as if I’d been holding something much longer than I realized. The message here is clear without being spoken: Set your burdens down.

The short walk from the guest house to the main volume is exactly the distance that feels welcoming but not intrusive. Bobby knows how to design state change: thresholds that signal to the mind and body that you’re entering fresh territory, where you can behave a bit differently—should you choose.

Stacks of firewood line the diamond-patterned porch floors as pairs of muddied Wellie boots stand at attention beside them. Charred wood siding contrasts with the raw white-oak door, its linenfold relief carving lending homage to high craft. I raise my arm high to the rim lockset, its elaborate assortment of antique-style knobs and levers resembling a jewel box viewed from above.

“The doorknob is set high on the door, up near your cheekbone—and there’s a reason for that: to make you feel like a small child again,” Bobby explains later. “The experience at the lake is not to feel tall and important; it’s more like a storybook.”

Entering the main living space feels more like stepping into a chapel than a residence. The dimensions soar as black walls and ceilings contrast bleached white-oak floors. Towers of glass flank the sides; a grid of sharp diamonds shimmers as it frames the watery vista. Many‑armed chandeliers fitted with dozens of shades cast a ceremonious glow across the room like great candelabrum.

Linen, silk, velvet and chenille pillows in nine shades of chartreuse melt together in the evening light, appearing more like French butter than the springy “wick green” Blake first noticed while trail‑running during the pandemic.

“I had been going stir‑crazy, so I started running in the woods,” Blake notes. “I was mesmerized by the color of the leaves. It’s almost impossible to capture that green, because it takes so many shades to bring it to life. We wanted to extract that. The outside of the house is the color of cinder—like lightning struck the wood—but inside, it’s regrowth.”

What’s immediately clear is that this isn’t just a Bobby McAlpine house; it’s a place Blake built alongside him. Their Lake Martin retreat—as with their homes in Atlanta (current and former) and New York—is just one of several they’ve co-authored together, each a joint self‑portrait.

“We’ve created three nests that are pretty exacting to both of us,” Bobby explains. “So it feels comfortable even when you’re there by yourself, because it carries the marks of both of us. None of our houses would look like they do if it were just me. Without Blake, I probably wouldn’t have gone as bold with the architecture… maybe I just never had anybody to play with like this.”

Blake and I have been friends for 15 years, even longer than he’s known Bobby. During our mid‑20s, he was my handsome date to many an industry event, my dancing partner at parties, my copilot on photo shoots where we schlepped as much as we styled, making plenty of mistakes (mostly mine) along the way. He was already a rare talent back then, winning international awards for window displays on a shoestring budget while his sculptures took the form of elaborate jewelry—a nascent version of the intricate assemblages he fashions today. I always sensed how his work dipped into a parallel register, as if glimpsed through Second Sight. As he once told me, “The creatures exist somewhere long before I assemble them. I’m just coaxing them into this world with hemp, beads and paint.”

Blake’s fingerprints are everywhere at the lake. On a table to the left of the front door, I spot a framed painting made by his sister, an incredible artist in her own right. Nearby, a high-back Victorian armchair sprouts a mischievous tail. Murky paintings by Birmingham artist Michael Marlowe capture the green‑brown depths of the Alabama water—the humble landscape that birthed both men.

Many people treat McAlpine houses as serious. They are. But Blake’s presence has shifted the work toward what they call a “sacred third thing”—not Bobby or Blake alone, but something greater that belongs to both. “Our partnership has that effect on me; things tip toward the stranger side,” Bobby explains. “We like to find the love affair between opposites.”

The living room corrals a museum‑caliber menagerie: carved ritual vessel seats that double as sculpture, vintage globes, primitive stools, a carved scroll conjuring a sea creature tentacle. It feels a bit like stumbling onto a stage play mid-scene. Here is a house that doesn’t need me to perform for it. The effect is less gallery than company; I get the sense the room has space for my own oddness, too.

“We almost wanted this space to feel like the wings of a theater,” Bobby explains. “There are so many eccentric characters here—pieces with a gap in the teeth or a lazy eye. If something is already a little broken, it means you don’t have to show up perfect. The real message is: Come as you are. Just come and be.”

The living room was made for nights like this, joining my hosts at the long table for dinner. Here we are at ease enough to drift into candor: unguarded truths, vivid observations, lots of laughter and almost as much blue cheese. Something about the steadiness of this place makes it easier to say the stranger, truer things without reservation.

“My biggest trigger is inauthenticity… I can’t be with it. I can’t stand it, so I want everything I do to be truthful,” Blake says, reminding me of why I adore him. “And I think that’s evident in the houses Bobby and I have created together.” Adds Bobby: “A house, if done well, will bear witness to you and let you be yourself.”

I rise the next morning at a quarter past 6:00—early for me—and my gaze drifts upward to the eerie Romanticist painting of a mermaid and child on the ceiling. I later learn that the opposite suite features a similarly positioned Francisco Goya print of levitating witches. Blake and Bobby like to sneak moments like these into spaces. There’s always a bit of a wink through design.

The intention is to unsettle you, but only slightly, the way a story needs one strange image to linger. “We like to provoke the guests a little,” Bobby notes. Blake continues: “We want the experience to be worth the trip. If you came all this way to see us, we want it to be memorable.”

Rising to my feet, I greet the sunrise through leaded windows: a long red stripe threading through the lake’s surface. Atop a rough‑hewn console by the window, a heavyweight mooring chain and tiny brass dish cradle an opalescent stone like an egg in a nest—so very Blake.

In that moment, I realize what this room—bound by gleaming panes, scattered with light‑catching paperweights and sculptures-on-stand—represents. “As much as we love everything in our home, our loved ones who visit are the most important thing,” Blake explains. “We want to give you space to shine and be the jewels in the jewel box.” Adds Bobby: “It’s a box of treasures—and you’re one of them.”

This morning, I make an unusual choice: no makeup today. In this place, showing up barefaced and exposed somehow feels most appropriate. Even among all of this untold beauty, overflowing to a degree that humbles you, this house has a way of making you feel like yourself. “I don’t ever want anyone to feel an edge here,” Blake comments. “I want them to enjoy it, but I don’t ever want it to be intimidating.”

Crossing to the main residence, I whisk through the galley‑style morning bar to grab a bowl for yogurt and granola. The coffee machine hisses as I make my first of several cappuccinos. I decide to spend the lion’s share of my day in the summer house, a floating screened porch that links the lake finger to Blake’s favorite sunning spot, the swim platform. The path descends lazily from the dining porch, cutting through pine straw beds as feathery ferns lift their fronds like a ceremonial arch of swords.

I reach my destination and enter a screened‑in world of serenity. Stretching out on one of the deep sofas, I’m suddenly free to read, scroll or simply exist as the gentle sounds of waves lap beneath me. The sensory wonders of nature filter through from every direction. I notice all: the birdsong, the swaying white spider lilies, a beached bass with its gills of bright vermillion (another of Blake’s favorite hues). In this moment, I feel like I can really think—or perhaps finally feel free not to. Later, Bobby gives words to the sensation: “Emotionally, I want it to feel like you’re right at the perfect point of gravity. You’re where you’re supposed to be.”

After lunch with my hosts, I join Blake on the swim platform, a cooler of his longtime poison of choice, Diet Mountain Dew, close by. We sit and talk about life until the sun is low in the sky—the heavy, the heady, the hopeful and the things only the two of us will ever know. There is a dimension of understanding between us that beckons me to become a brighter, braver version of myself. Good friends do that. So do good houses.

That evening, we pile onto the living room sofas with the dogs to watch movies until it’s harder to stay awake. Here is a world where sleep calls to you, rather than having to be forced. In recent years, rest is something that has felt precarious, even fragile for me—shored up by supplements and small rituals before I turn out the light. Finally, those efforts can fall away.

I’d absorbed Bobby’s wisdom about a house bearing witness many times before. But it wasn’t until I slept in the shadowy guest lair, walked the porches with bare feet and sat with Blake watching the light drain out of the water that I finally understood what he meant.

One weekend stretched beyond physics, bending the barriers of time. My shoulders rested lower, and the usual static in my head had settled like dust. I’d only been here two days on paper. To my body, it felt much longer. ✦