I find myself in quite the place: the sleepy and sweet Essex Village. My parents have a house here and I’ve been up visiting—pretty necessarily—on the heels of a big breakup.
Essex doesn’t demand a thing from you. All of the “to do's” are slow-paced, quiet, in nature.
Life here is softer—perfect for a healing heart or true respite.
Its 10 square miles undrape:
meandering residential sidewalks—where you'll pass families residing in 500 square foot homes built in the late 1700s as well as 20,000 square foot Nantucket-esque mansions
locals willing for real conversation
hiking trails throughout 23 preserves
world award-winning chocolatiers
the great annual swallow migration across the Connecticut River
“Authenticity” I said as I sat with a friend in the cafe yesterday, trying to place why it felt the shops’ have something to do with this; the town is lined with decades-old shops with owners still behind the counters.
Earlier that morning, Dave, the owner of the cafe we’re in, stretched his neck out of the window to spot a passing car while handing me my drink. “He’s been ordering too much coffee lately,” he said with a concerned frown.
There is a quiet power in this storybook town. No spas necessary, no resort atmosphere—just being amongst nature with people like this around; in a setting more soft than it is loud.
When thinking of titles for this pitch, I looked up the term "negative space” as I felt it matched Essex’s kind of activities, its preserves’ expanses, its gentle people. A bold synonym appeared as if for my own internal acknowledgment: “allowance.”
I would like to write a story of Essex Village peppered with the message that vacations need less plans and less things; how we need to allow life, unfilled.
For the truest luxury we can feel is the return to ourselves.