a nicer where to be

Once in awhile, I need to be somewhere besides where I am. (You’ve been there, too: In the middle seat on a flight, under the hairdryer, waiting at the DMV.)

I go here. This is our summer kitchen down at the lake house. Best we can figure from local anecdotes, it was built in the 1960s, using timber milled from the property, plus materials salvaged from all over the county. The vintage-y Christmas lights are beacons in the dang-dark nights, whether you’re navigating up from the dock or down from the house. And a rainy day tin-roof timpani is just about the best sound in the world. Sitting here on any given day or night, you can watch deer, muskrats, snakes, lightning bugs, hummingbirds, bluebirds, coyote, eagles, woodpeckers, falling leaves, falling snow, and falling stars.

The people from whom we bought the lake house wanted to tear down the summer kitchen to build something “nicer.”