In this first episode, we read from one of the most quietly devastating essays in American literature. E.B. White returned to the lake in Maine where he had spent summers as a boy — and brought his own young son along. What follows is an ordinary week of fishing and swimming, narrated with such precision and restraint that it becomes something else entirely: a meditation on time, memory, and what it means to watch your childhood recede into your child.

The excerpt read in this episode covers White's opening passages — the first day on the lake, the disorientation of the returning adult, and the uncanny doubling of generations.

About the author: E.B. White (1899–1985) was a staff writer at The New Yorker for nearly six decades. He is the author of Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and the revised The Elements of Style. He remains one of the most admired essayists in the American tradition.

The original essay was first published in Harper's Magazine in August 1941. It is widely anthologized and considered among the finest personal essays of the twentieth century.