Winter Weekend on the East End, East Hampton, New York

I learned a new word recently: smultronställe. It’s Swedish, literally meaning “place of wild strawberries,” however more familiarly means a place discovered, treasured, returned to for solace and relaxation, a personal idyll free from stress or sadness. Immediately, I understood this sentiment in my relationship with my own hometown of Amagansett. Amagansett was founded by the Dutch in 1648 and remains a small village nestled between the bay and the ocean north-to-south and Montauk and East Hampton east-to-west.

I wasn’t born here. I was born in Manhattan, and it’s true that even though I’ve grown up here since the age of 7, I may forever be distinguished from a true local. Of course, on the opposite end, most native New Yorkers’ first question to other New Yorkers is: where did you go to school? And thus, even though I began my childhood in Manhattan and continued to visit one half of my parental unit on the island of Manhattan through to the age of adulthood — I’m distinguished again from full native New Yorker status. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).