How much lovelier to experience your vacation more deeply by enjoying the out-of-body experience that reading provides. When you read “Dream Islands” in this issue, you’ll be whisked over the coast to some of the most beautiful places on earth. That’s why Edna St. Vincent Millay left New York undercover every summer to visit her Ragged Island in Harpswell—a windswept refuge trimmed in stones and sea roses. She came up here to read—and to hear herself think. As she put it, “where thought unbraids itself, and the mind becomes single.”

Stories like this have the power to transport you to somewhere, and somewhen, else. In our revealing story “Endless Ocean, Endless Love,” you’ll experience what Edith Wharton felt as an ingénue falling in love for the first time. For her whole life she treasured her Maine lover like a secret room in a house. Enter Edith’s romantic universe on page 153.

Then imagine a chance return to the Old Port of your youth, only to stare into the eyes of your earlier self who didn’t have “so many sad things to tuck away.” Novelist Ann Hood has written an exquisite story for this year’s Summerguide.

You won’t need a cell tower where you’re going. You won’t need batteries or a charger cord. Maine is the loveliest place to experience feasts for all the senses. (Lobster Pizza, anyone? See page 125. An island that inspires a violin concerto? See page 183. Whitewater rapids on an inflatable? See page 109.)

By the way, you’re looking pretty fantastic…Have you been reading?

Spoiler alert: you’re having fun.

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