A red maple tree in the backyard stretched well above the two-story house where I grew up. It was not an easy tree to climb, but it was the best one. I would jump up to grab the lowest branch…

Winter drapes the hills around the cabin in white, softening the world and quieting its noise. The stillness of the season settles around us, inviting us to live each day with intention,…

My neighbor Judy Smith, who is a geologist, told me one afternoon that the shale cliffs we looked up at from her cottage porch, along the north branch of the Susquehanna River, are Devonian…

For 12 years, my family has spent a week on the same property in Downeast Maine. In mid-June, with summer draped lazily before us, we travel east along Route 1 and bear right after Bucksport.…

In March, I left my apartment in the city and returned to my childhood home eight states away. Mom had to sell the house in a rush, the deal closing just before the stay-at-home orders went…

Years ago, my three siblings and I discovered that we shared a recurring nightmare: We are running for our lives down our childhood street in Brooklyn, being chased by a subway train broken…

Because, as the crow flies, I’m only a few flaps and caws from the Connecticut River, I wake up most autumn mornings to a river fog dreamscape. All the air is suffused with soft gray, as…

The summer I was 23, I lived in a treehouse in the Maine woods. My boyfriend, Curry, and I had just returned to the state after an unsuccessful attempt to start careers in Colorado, near my…

The cook cabin sat in the middle of the campground, its front porch looking directly out across Kidney Pond and into the southern part of Baxter State Park. It fit perfectly between the old…