Fiction, Essays, and Other Things

There are hidden gems all around us and the most striking ones embrace us with their simplicity. The charm of Mrs. Meckler’s Sugar Shack is precisely how cozily tucked away it is. Cohasset’s Beachwood Street is, in itself, not hard to find, but hidden behind a basketball court down a forested road on the way to Broken Spoke Farm lies a little wooden structure that can only be described as classic New England. Throughout the dirt road leading up to the Sugar Shack are signs tantalizing approaching visitors, a quainter rendition of the tactic seen throughout Route 95 for South of the Border. The genius of the place is that it works with the surrounding nature rather than against it. Aesthetically Sugar Shack fits naturally in with the pines that tower over it. It feels like a part of the woods. Visiting it while snow still covers the ground only enhances the warmth it emits. When I visited early in January Christmas wreaths still decorated the small windows and a wool Christmas tree sto...

No matter how much I yearn for nature and long for escapes in the woods after a while I need to see a city again. It’s not that the clean air, the tranquility or the sights have worn out their welcome, but I do need to see signs of human life and the comforts of modernity. This is especially true in a place like Iceland where nature yields many through its strongest intensity. When arriving from the hills (charmingly decorated with troll houses, a tradition started perhaps as a celebration of local folklore and continued for photographers) and sheep farms, Reykjavík seems, as the counterpart to grassy knolls and waterfalls, the prototype of a city; busier, louder and always bustling. But on closer inspection its charms and character come to light. The roads are narrow and not always the easiest to drive through, but I am a Boston driver, after all. The shops and cafes are neatly tied in rows and one of the first I visited was a bookshop. Here I found some volumes on Icelandic legends a...