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The romance is implicit in Nantucket Looms' tagline: Handwoven Thirty Miles Out to Sea. But once I'm aboard the Hy-Line ferry, speeding away from the Massachusetts mainland, it snaps into [...]

It's eight weeks till Halloween, and Salem is bracing itself. 'Last year we had 100,000 visitors,' says one local shopkeeper, with practiced equanimity. 'They came by train, boat, bus, car, [...]

The house sits in a cup of sunlight at the end of a two-mile dirt road that winds past old sheep meadows. It sits with assurance and composure, a fact [...]

In summer, the sun casts a beach-town shimmer over Narragansett. Caught between the Atlantic and Narragansett Bay (not a bad place to get hung up), the town's beating heart is [...]

Parents or alumni?' asks a fellow passenger as we step into the elevator at the Hanover Inn, docked like an ocean liner on the banks of the Dartmouth College Green [...]

At some point in the last few decades of its 255-year history, Great Barrington became Chef Central, and on this random Saturday the southern Berkshire town teems with diners and [...]

The name came first: Soleil. A word that holds the sun inside and naturally conjures ice cream to cool the summer's heat. With a dash of France, a nod to [...]

Something about pewter evokes more than a whiff of colonial history. The early metal conjures up molten threads pouring into molds, the dusky smell of heated tin, the imagination of [...]

A couple of twists and turns from downtown Brattleboro--currently undergoing a Vermont-style Renaissance, with cafes and social activism sprouting in once K empty storefronts--the road winds down to a teal-blue [...]

The bees wouldn't leave her alone. Walking near her home in Hingham, Massachusetts, in the summer of 2010, Cheryl Dunlap was stunned when a bee zoomed by, inches from her [...]

When I first arrive in the coastal town of Eastport, Maine--practically in Canada--fields of wild lupine are blooming across the countryside, bursting into pink and purple spires. But by the [...]

Potters' arms are like works of art. Ropey and strong, they reflect years of pulling pots out of thick lumps of earth, their muscles habituated to lifting up and pressing [...]

Owner-curator Catherine McLetchie assembles the art and craft of 100 mostly Maine makers, her community of creatives, and shares them with such infectious enthusiasm you might be inspired to consider relocating to Maine, possibly to join in. "She's a real Mainer, doing real Mainer art", McLetchie says of Jessica Ives, whose sunstruck waterscapes feature swimmers and fishermen. In no special order, and without provocation, I find myself dreaming of tiny enameled earrings shaped like barnacles, blown-glass eggs with a dash of Jackson Pollock, and a tidy stack of laundry stain sticks. She's a close friend and now co-curator in this artistic adventure, helping McLetchie fill the barn with art, craft, community. [Extracted from the article]

The Fair is everywhere, even where it isn't. On Main Street, Fryeburg's public library is 'Closed K Due to Fair Traffic,' a masterful synopsis of the vehicles stretching to the [...]

Midway down the western side of Harpswell Peninsula, the choppy blue water is spotted with two islands, John and Joe, named for a long-gone shipbuilder's sons. 'I'm not partial, but [...]

It may be the most magical name for a lake--and the bane of spelling bees--but if you're lucky enough to live near Lake Winnipesaukee, then you're lucky enough. This 'beautiful [...]

In very short order, we walked past a French restaurant, a British gift shop, and an Italian pottery store carrying wares from Deruta, all tucked along the sinuous Main Street [...]

The joke, of course, is that New Englanders are a taciturn lot. Which makes it all the more delicious when a handful K of signs in the small, entirely delightful [...]

Once in a while, the past rises up unexpectedly. It can happen in a flash--a taste, a smell, a look--to rattle our equilibrium and spark long-buried memories. It can even [...]

A wintry morning sun begins its climb on this early December day. All around, ridges streaked with snow remind us that we're in the heart of the White Mountains, with [...]

Winter Harbor sits snugly on the edge of Maine's other Acadia National Park--the lesser-known, wild and quiet spread on the mainland's Schoodic Peninsula. A mere 30 minutes by ferry from [...]

They come seeking old linens, antlers, and vintage marquee lights. City stylists and Brimfield regulars make a beeline for their favorite vendors, while the crowds part whenever Oprah, Martha, Ralph, [...]

Some small New England towns, like Ashfield (population approximately 1,750), in western Massachusetts, remind me of old-fashioned porches--long-ago places where you sat and greeted neighbors, building community as surely as [...]

The light feels old ... What's surprising, though, is the warmth of color saturating the walls and furniture: dark mustard thick enough to sink your teeth into; rosy wooden chairs, [...]

The plates are singing like magpies at the Blue Benn Diner, a shiny bullet-shaped time capsule in Bennington, Vermont, that's been around since 1948. Awash in pancakes and nostalgia, we're [...]

HALLOWELL, MAINE * SETTLED: 1762 * POPULATION : 2,381 On a quiet, early-winter afternoon down by the Kennebec River in Hallowell, Maine, you can hear the ice creak like an [...]

They coast into the empty parking spaces like time travelers coming home. A dusting of fresh snow powders the sidewalk in front of the Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge, and [...]

Stephen Ray is a man with 45 barns, give or take. And each morning as he sits down to paint, Ray works to bring forth, from tubes of acrylic, another [...]

Two minutes from Narragansett Beach, just off busy Route 1, there's an oasis of shingled cottages and colorful houses called Peace Dale. Look for the green-shingled cottage with a faded [...]

Crispina ffrench had me at 'alchemy.' We are standing in a cozy, low-beamed room that evokes the Middle Ages, with its well-worn wooden floors and stone fireplace. The small space [...]

GREENFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS * SETTLED: 1686 * POPULATION : 17,456 From the top of solitary Poet's Seat Tower, the small city of Greenfield, Massachusetts, spreads out below like a feudal land [...]

There's a layer of quiet dust on the drawing pad by the north-facing window. All is in readiness--a fistful of brushes, watercolors, a chair drawn up before a modest square [...]

The summer storm comes out of nowhere. Scientifically speaking, of course, it comes out of somewhere, possibly skidding through downtown Shelburne, Vermont, from nearby Lake Champlain, a stout body of [...]

Seven a.m. at Cunningham Pond. Two box turtles huddle on a fallen shard of waterlogged wood that juts from the water like S whalebone. Nearby, on the shore, a stack [...]

Water is at the heart of Wickford, where you'll shop to the tune of gulls, take your morning coffee within sight of swans, and find the harbor a constant companion. [...]

In New London, trees have space to spread out; fields curve up and over the horizon. Draw a deep breath here in the hills, and you'll start to remember the [...]

Not far from Mark Twain's home in Hartford, Connecticut, is a garden that defies all weather. Planted in 1904, just six years before the humorist died, Elizabeth Park is the [...]

Essex Village is steeped in history, like a teabag dunked in time. Main Street bristles with homesteads from the early 1800s, architectural gems that draw your eye to the Connecticut [...]

Snow blows off the harbor at Newburyport, carrying whispers of clipper ships. They glide in from the Atlantic, these ghosts from the past, weary from the West Indies, laden with [...]

'Fire, heat, tools, noise--it's like a guy's dream,' grins Nicholas Wicks Moreau, a Connecticut blacksmith, surrounded by the fruits of this conflagration: music stands twined with metal ivy, a nicely [...]

A life takes shape, not so differently from a pot on a potter's wheel. Maybe the sides rise up evenly for a while--you grow up in Stoughton, Massachusetts, spend summers [...]

Nantucket weather catapults across the 30-mile stretch of water off Hyannis and changes as abruptly as a teenager's mood. High winds can ground the ferry--as it has on my first [...]

The biggest bully on the beach is also the smallest: Tabanus nigrovittatus, the dreaded greenhead fly. The wild serenity of the salt marsh stretches from Maine to Florida. It is [...]

At artist Jeff Soderbergh's Rhode Island studio, salvaged materials don't just inspire his custom furniture--they bring his garden to life. An enormous 'O' hangs in Jeff Soderbergh's backyard, dangling from [...]

BLOCK ISLAND, Rhode Island You won't want to leave one of the most beautiful islands in the world for walking, biking, or simply boring out to sea. MORNING: 'Close to [...]

One thing's for sure: There's weather here. Enfolded in the bright white clouds that scud like sails across the sky, casting shadows over Lake Champlain. In the heavy sunlight penetrating [...]

The president's house at Unity College is no grand Georgian manor in the New England tradition. The walls are bare of ivy, and the portico, such as it is, shades [...]

By car I'd have missed the haunting old Revolutionary War cemetery; on foot, it seems as inevitable as a bend in the road. High on a hillside overlooking Echo Lake, [...]

Time stands still in all the best places, but only for so long. As spring melts into Long Island Sound, the villages along the Connecticut shoreline stir and stretch, sloughing [...]

It falls quietly, here in this gentle clearing, snow as downy as a feather. Brushing up against the shingled cottage, settling onto the last husks of summer's hydrangeas, dusting over [...]