Hanging next to the front door of Natasha Chuk and Justin Maiman’s jewel box cottage in Cairo, there’s a lady sketched in the charcoal gray and black outline of grief. “It’s a mourning image,” explains Chuk, a media theorist who teaches and writes about seeing the remnants of things—whether a person or an art form—long after they’ve disappeared. “It looks like a photo, it’s even tinted like a photo,” she says. “And there are all these layers to the framing—like it has this secret embedded in it.” And the portrait does have a secret: It’s actually sketched on the back of a 19th-century albumen photo of a Catskills train station. “I love that it’s hidden in plain sight,” she says. “The antique dealer revealed it after I bought it. I thought, ‘Wow, this is such a gem.’”
The couple hasn’t yet been able to uncover the story behind the piece. Even after Maiman, a journalist and media strategist, started the “Ginger Radio Hour,” a monthly show on WGXC in Catskill uncovering the stories of humans and other species who make the Catskills home. What they have discovered in the two decades since they bought the sheltered cottage is their own true natural habitat. “After 20 years, we both feel like this is the house that we wanted,” says Maiman. “It’s lush and private, and I think it really reflects who we are, inside and out.”
Meet Me at the Crossroads
The couple hail from opposite ends of the country, and met while working at PBS in Minnesota’s Twin Cities. Maiman, a Portland, Maine native, was producing a nightly news show at the time. Chuk was born in Monterrey, Mexico, and spent her childhood there and stateside in San Antonio, before studying film at the University of Minnesota and interning at PBS.
Each had dreams of making it in New York City, but were hesitant to take the leap. “We had both, separately, wanted to move to New York, but I don’t think I would have done it on my own,” says Maiman. But as the two began dating, they inspired each other to bigger challenges. “The combined element that we both wanted to do it really worked,” says Maiman. “Plus, Natasha had a car that she could sell.” Maiman was also able to add some money to the pot, and, in 2002, they were off.
A few years later, that same spirit of adventure brought them to the Hudson Valley. In 2004, they travelled to Cairo to spend the weekend with close friends. “When we first arrived, we never intended to buy a home. But, we’d lived in a bunch of small apartments in the city, and felt like, Geez, it would be nice to have a little more space,” says Maiman. “The mountains, the river, and the bright stars drew us in. The vast space we encountered was intoxicating.”
They began regularly taking the bus to the local stop on Cairo’s Main Street, right in front of Karen’s Flower Shop, hanging out with their friends and exploring the area. As they slowed to the town’s pace, they began to appreciate the nearby mountain setting and Cairo’s small-town vibe. “I have fond memories of experiencing the Sierra Madre Oriental Mountains towering above the buildings in Monterrey and peering through the gaps on every street,” says Chuk. “The mountains are an integral part of everyday life there. The Catskills recall a similar sensation for me.” They also loved the quietness of Cairo, its reliable grocery store, and the writer’s library. It was all they needed, and they started searching for their own home.
Seeing Past the Shag
For six months, they searched for the perfect nest—traveling as far away as Margaretville to find something that suited—but no dice. “We looked at a lot of places, but in our price range, which was very low, there were no houses with character,” says Maiman. “We just kept seeing a bunch of cookie-cutter boxes,” says Chuk. Adds Maiman, “and carpet, there was lots and lots of carpet.”
They essentially gave up. A few months later, Chuk was perusing Craigslist when she came across a seemingly misplaced listing. “I found this house cross-listed in New York City, and thought, ‘What’s this doing here?’ says Chuk. “I immediately recognized the house had character.” Chuk loved the unconventional layout and wooded lot at Cairo’s edge. Originally built in the 1920s as a 400-square-foot real estate office, the footprint remained small. That modest footprint would later give them room to rethink what a home addition could bring to the house. “The house felt like it had a big personality,” says Chuk.
When they drove up that next weekend, they were greeted by a piano playing through the early autumn afternoon. “The owner had pumpkins out, and everything about it felt quaint,” says Chuk. The living room featured woodland-themed wallpaper and a stone fireplace. There was also a small bedroom and bath, a simple early-20th-century kitchen, and an outside deck overlooking a gully. “It had wacky wallpaper everywhere; a baby grand piano in the living room corner, and bookshelves built-in into the frames of the windows filled with books,” says Chuk. “It was awkward but endearing. I could suddenly see us living in this space.”
Just as when they’d first set out for New York City on a dream and a shoestring, the couple gathered up all their cash on hand and put in an offer. It worked, and in 2006, they moved to Cairo, part-time.
Risky Design Business
The first task at hand was the living room, where they tore out the bookshelves from the wood-frame casement windows, the walls, and the wacky wallpaper themselves. They did, however, hang on to the design inspiration. “The previous owner’s style didn’t fit ours, but it invited us to take risks,” says Chuk. “It felt like a call to communicate something personal and expressive in this home.” They repainted the interior dark blue-gray and eventually hired Kelly Masonry & Design to create a bluestone fireplace veneer.
In 2011, they took a similar approach when updating the bathroom, grafting their own vision onto the roots of the original design. “We wanted to maintain the old look,” says Chuk. “But restore it and replace the fiberglass shower.” They preserved the wall-mounted sink with a bridge faucet as well as the marble base toilet, and then sourced a clawfoot shower stall online. “Our contractors were dubious,” says Chuk. “They’d never seen it before, but it suited the space.”
As they spent more time in Cairo, friends and family visited often. “We wanted a way to put guests up comfortably,” says Chuk. “We realized we needed to add another bedroom.” In 2017, they transformed a pergola and deck into a second bedroom with a skylight, French doors, and a full bath, adding additional deck space right outside the new primary suite. “It’s simple and comfortable with lots of windows and an inside-outside fluidity,” says Chuk. “We spend a lot of time on the deck and in the yard.” The couple also converted a former back shed into an office and overflow guest space.
Still Life, Cairo
By 2018 they were tired of ping-ponging back and forth between city and country. “I had some very stressful jobs in media, and coming here on weekends just wasn’t enough to slow down,” says Maiman, who began rearranging his schedule to eventually work fully remotely.
That year, the two committed to making Cairo their full-time residence and haven’t looked back. “When we started spending more time here, the newsletter [the Ginger Newsletter, published weekly], and my life, became overwhelmed with the region,” says Maiman. “It took a while to pay attention here in a deep way.” That attention, and Maiman’s newsletter, eventually grew into his radio show, where he interviews writers and naturalists about the region. “It’s one of the scariest things I’ve done in years,” he says.
The couple’s embrace of the region also revealed other secrets, hiding in plain sight, not on the back of a portrait, but all around them. “Cairo calls itself the Crossroads of the Catskills, and our house feels like that for the local critters,” says Maiman. “Wild turkeys came by. A trio of chipmunks made themselves known. A barred owl. Pileated woodpeckers nested in the snags in our gully. And later, miraculously, a peacock made our yard and gully home for a whole summer.” Adds Chuk, “It’s a gift to share this property with different species. It’s a sanctuary for all of us.”
This article appears in August 2026.
