For a city girl like me, a trip to a college friend's summer lake house in Greensboro, Vermont, feels as exotic as an expedition through North Africa. Nature seems more alive here on Caspian Lake—dappled light falls through sighing trees, mirroring lazy ripples on the inky water. The temperature on the porch is twenty degrees cooler than it is in New York City and the nights are almost chilly. I slept for hours with all of the cabin's doors and windows open, breathing in the fragrance of century-old cedar planks. During the day, I took a dip in the sun-warmed lake before an audience of thousands of conifers, only leaving to pick up locally-grown pincushion berries for juicy and cool fresh blueberry pies. Listening to a loon sound a lupine call over its watery sovereignty, I could imagine living here and never tiring of the magic.