All heat waves are emotionally devastating as well as physically uncomfortable, especially in Northern California, where there is no central air conditioning (“No central air conditioning? Surely some public establish –” NO CENTRAL AIR CONDITIONING). I can handle the winter, or what we have in the way of it here. I can turn on the heat, or drag my cat onto my lap, or double up on socks. But a heat wave! Friends and lovers, heat waves are spiritually ruinous. There is nothing more debilitating to my sense of personal consistency than discovering it only takes a few days in a row over 95° for me to experience a complete and total loss of ego integrity.

“How hot is it, Mallory?”

Dear Mother, and to a lesser extent Father,

Many things in the world have not been named; and many things, even if they have been named, have never been described. One of these is the sensibility — unmistakably modern, a variant of sophistication but hardly identical with it — that goes by the name of Camp Kenwood at Winnipesaukee‎.

To snare a sensibility in words, especially one that is alive and powerful and swarming with first-summer city kids, one must be tentative and nimble. The form of jottings, rather than an essay (with its claim to a linear, consecutive argument), seemed more appropriate for getting down something of this particular fugitive sensibility. It’s embarrassing to be solemn and treatise-like about Camp Kenwood. How can a piece of writing capture the spirit of summer camp? How can, to put it in terms you will understand, an indoor kid write about the most wholly outdoors of activities, namely Camp?

Camp taste is, above all, a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation — not judgment. Camp is generous. It wants to enjoy. There is pudding with almost every meal (rice pudding at breakfast). We are not permitted to leave the table without cleaning our pudding cups and singing our respective cabin’s anthem with the greatest show of enthusiasm one can muster at six-thirty AM in New Hampshire.

“Knowing how the falls had received their picturesque name, however, did nothing to help the two soggy lovebirds from becoming one with this natural phenomenon.”

“He was a ‘popular’ student at the University of California. With social success often comes confidence, perhaps even over-confidence. Whether any connection exists between this and his next decision remains conjecture.”

“The girls looked around and decided that this photo was too tame.”

“Amazingly, it looked like the two were going to make it back onto the bank at the very last second before shooting over the edge. But no.”

Samantha told me the secret of her country life while we lay sprawled on a picnic blanket at sundown. We were at an outdoor concert in the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts. The band weaved their way past picnickers on their way to the concert stage. Strands from a bamboo flute drifted by, snatches of drums, a man playing a moon-shaped lute. We’d both had some wine.

“Since I moved here,” Samantha whispered, looking sneaky, “I’ve come a lot closer to death.”

“Me too,” I said, beaming over at her. Finally someone had said it.

“It’s the mountains, I think.”

“They’re so big,” I said. “And we’re so small.”

“And it’s so quiet, all of the time.”

We watched our friends divvy up a wedge of Brie a few feet away. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that I might have to stay in the Berkshires for the rest of my life. This was a scary thought, but I was getting super-used to those. I scooted forward, reached for some cheese.

*

I moved to the Berkshires when I was 28. Living in the country had never been my personal dream, but I was trying to pursue a career in journalism and I’d gotten a job offer I felt I couldn’t refuse. So what if the Berkshires was the Bermuda Triangle of cell phone reception and all the coffee shops closed by 6 pm? Print media was croaking, the economy was still hacking up blood, and a girl had to take what she could get.