Dusk

I'm suffering from that kind of total exhaustion that comes only from happiness and temperatures over 80 degrees. I got back to Brooklyn at midnight from 4 days alone at Elmwood and am now excited and dead-to-the-world tired in equal measure. For those who haven't spent a summer with an apple a day, Elmwood is my family's ancient, ragamuffin summer house on a secluded pond in New Hampshire.

The house is filled with faded wallpaper, chipping paint, 200 years worth of family detritus and this time around, a few decapitated mouse bodies that I was too terrified to touch; the pond, on the other hand, has sunfish, bull frogs, a private island of pine trees, a small beaver dam, a canoe, a rowboat, a leech or two and several snapping turtles the size of hubcaps. Calling it a summer house alludes to a certain Newport-ishness that it severely lacks, but I'm the happiest there, more so than anywhere else in the world.

Four days alone of paddling at dusk and swatting bugs, collecting lilac and lily of the valley, sleeping in the sun and huddling in the rain- I'm now seriously overwhelmed by ideas and plans. The freedom I've had in the past few months has been incredible, a gift I would have never dared to give myself. I'm over the moon to be able to spend time in places I love the most and also be dreaming up projects I couldn't have wished to hope for this time last year. We have so much to talk about, friends. The thought of summer is electrifying and I hope you are feeling it, too.