Where to live

“Let us live in the land of the whispering trees,
                Alder and aspen and poplar and birch,

Singing our prayers in a pale, sea-green breeze,

               With star-flower rosaries and moss banks for church.’’

-- From “For C.W.B., by Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979). The celebrated poet was born in Worcester and often summered in North Haven, Maine, after she became famous.

Elizabeth Bishop’s summer house, on the island of North Haven, Maine. This Wikipedia entry is a pretty good description of North Haven:

”In the 1880s, the island was discovered by ‘rusticators,’ seasonal residents first from Boston, then followed a decade or two later by others from New York and Philadelphia. North Haven is best known today for its sizable summer colony of prominent Northeasterners, particularly Boston Brahmins, drawn to the island for over a century to savor its simple way of life. Among the more notable summer residents was the impressionist painter Frank Weston Benson, who rented the Wooster Farm as a summer home and painted several notable canvases set on the island.’’

"Summer" (1909), by Frank Weston Benson