CUCUMBER MINT COOLER.

I blabbed my excitement about it to anyone who would listen from the moment I glimpsed precipitation on the forecast: I can’t wait, I cooed. They mostly looked at me like I’d spent too long in the rare books vault we visited earlier in the day. I’m from LA, I explained. I miss the rain. I didn’t say: I miss the softness rain brings to a place, the drench of soil, the awakening of scent. I didn’t say: I miss the mountains. I miss the trees. I didn’t say: Part of me withers without it. Instead, I waited for rain.

It came in sheets this morning, and I walked to breakfast on the Hampshire College campus without an umbrella, in sandals, past fields of nodding ox eye daisy and lavender lupine flowers, craving a soaking.

Before I say much else, let me explain: I am in Amherst, Massachusetts for the next week as part of a creative writing fellowship with Tent. I am joined by nineteen other young writers of poetry, fiction, and (like me) creative non-fiction. The Yiddish Book Center, on the campus of Hampshire College, has graciously opened its arms to us, and we are here—Jews and non-Jews alike—to discuss Jewish identity, culture, and literature.

We are here to smell thousands of old books in temperature-controlled rare book vaults. We are here to kvetch (Yiddish: to complain) about cafeteria food and divulge our teenage obsessions with the holocaust and kvell (Yiddish: to beam with pleasure and pride) over the power of the written word. We are here to drink hungrily the alchemical nectar that comes of bringing together a group of impassioned, opinionated artists.

It is the greatest relief.

In seminar, as we wade through texts on identity and Jewishness, I thought about the ways I held back the grittier parts of my voice, my story, when I first started this blog. I assumed nobody would want to read anything more than exclamatory, surface-skimming, short-form descriptions of food. But two years into that, my creative heart was breaking. And as I shared more and more of myself with you all—generous readers that you are—I found that not only did you want to get in the human mud with me, to go in deep, but also that you were in it for good.

We were in it together. To learn from each other. To be real and to be messy and to eat good food in the process.

And to stay hydrated, of course. It is hot and sticky in the afternoons here, a long sun arcing across a wan blue sky. I guzzle bottle after bottle of the pineapple-melon-lemon infused water the cafeteria makes for us each morning, and I dream of the day next week when I’ll be reunited with my Vitamix.

This blended-and-strained (no juicer required) juice is a longtime favorite for optimal hydration and thirst quenching. It’s an ideal way to begin or end your day, and lovely to enjoy anytime in between. The most refreshing way to celebrate voice, creativity, rain, wild flowers, Jewishness.