Every summer vacation, my children and I return to the cottage my parents built in the Blue Ridge Mountains thirty-five years ago. Our holiday is never properly launched until, upon our arrival, just before dark, we scramble through the sloping drapery of foliage and descend the ridge behind the house to the meadow, where sinewy vines hang like circus ropes from a canopy of trees. Parents and children alike transform instantly. We cut vines from the tangled roots and test them for swinging strength. Then, holding tightly, we let ourselves loose upon the fragrant air, soaring toward the distant twilit mountaintops, wreathed in crowns of early stars.