Unless you already happen to live beside a stunning mountain lake in Guatemala or inside a fairy-tale walled garden in Varanasi, you are far, far away, but your individual comforts and desires are still in familiar focus.

FORBES: Editor's Note

The hut stood on its own patch of land, which was walled off by stakes, stones brought from the shore of Lake Onega and piled up haphazardly, and rusty sheets of roof iron, probably carried here from some distant town by a gale.

NEWYORKER: Among Animals and Plants