Cape Cod Journal, Part II
Sunday 6/11
Woke up to a bright, sunny morning with a glorious blue sky and white puffy clouds. We head down the road, past the Mashpee National Wildlife Refuge (we’ll have to save that for another trip) to South Cape beach. When we step out on the beach, which is on the “Atlantic” side (though actually it’s Vineyard Sound), it feels a lot more oceany than the Long Island Sound beach near our house in Branford. There’s a steady 20 mph wind blowing that was completely nonexistent back at the condo. Enough to blow away the sleeves of the folding beach chairs if they aren’t weighted down with rocks, and even to tip over the chairs themselves when no one is sitting in them. We layer up with shirts and sweatshirts and determinedly play with Nicholas’s new water wheel for about 10 minutes. Then Nicholas is cold, so he snuggles up in a towel with Suzanne to warm up and I get horizontal and try to absorb a little solar radiation via the few uncovered parts of my body (face, shins, feet). After we’re warm enough we make a few more trips with our pails and get the water wheel spinning vigorously. That achieved, we flee the beach itself and point the van toward the ocean (okay, Sound). Parked about 20 feet from the surf, we put some Marley on the cd player, open the sun roof, and settle in for a “picnic” lunch. In my mind, this officially inaugurates the van as “surf wagon,” a concept which points backward to my days as a beach bum in Ocean City, MD and forward to my anticipated purchase of my first kayak. Anyway, the “surf wagon” thing is important, so I tell Suzanne she has to humor me.
*
In describing lunch I left out all the nagging we had to do to get Nicholas to eat his turkey sandwich. But I also left out the poem he composed as we sat there:
the waves are in the sky
the fish are jumping up and down on the beach
everything’s all mixed up!
I’m a little biased, of course, but I think this is pretty good stuff for three years old.
*
Now the question arises of whether to put in all the potty training adventures this trip has involved so far (and I’m sure there are more to come). Dear Reader, I think I’ll leave them out. But here’s a Cape Cod riddle for you: What kind of canal experiences turbulence but has no boats? Alimentary, my dear Watson.
*
After nap, we head out under overcast skies looking for Sandy Neck Beach in West Barnstable. We possess the usual crude tourist map devoting lavish care to the locations of local businesses but with no concept of scale or proportion. And the little roads on the Cape can be pretty twisty, quite unlike the straight or gently curving lines on the map, so things always seem to end up being farther away than you expect. As we drive, the skies keep darkening, and it’s 4 o’clock by the time we get to the beach (the advantage here being that they stopped charging an entry fee at 3:30). Sandy Neck Beach turns out to be not so sandy, or rather, the sand is buried beneath lots of stones. Since I watched Nicholas while Suzanne got a nap (and Nicholas didn’t) I have earned a solo walk on the beach (we negotiate for “autonomy”), so I head off right away. The initial idea is that I’ll get some exercise, so I set a quick pace at first, but before long I’m sauntering (Thoreau would be proud). The beach may be covered with stones, but it turns out that they are pretty great stones, coming in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and colors. The overcast skies have “rent asunder,” as they used to say, with big rips and tears and pools of blue shining through, and the beach is wide and flat and good for walking if you keep your sandals on. The 20 mph wind from earlier in the day has either died down or never started up over here on the bay side. Soon my pockets are full of stones—milky translucent white, dark purple, pale green, lavender, and so on. Some are big, ovoid, and speckled, like the petrified eggs of some extinct beast. And the bands of clouds in the sky seem to be doing their best to match the grey-white portion of the stony palette, going from translucent white to slate grey to pale ash.
*
When I come back from my walk (just under 30 minutes) I feel like I’ve been somewhere. Nicholas comes running toward me gleefully as I come in sight of the beach towels and my heart leaps. We spend some mellow time hauling water in our pails and dumping it a little ways up the beach for no particular reason. And while I’m taking pictures of Suzanne and Nicholas a thoughtful stranger offers to take one of the three of us. The light starts to get that “magic hour” quality as we head towards dusk, and it’s nearly six by the time we leave the beach for dinner.
*
Trying to remember that poem I composed in my head before we even left for the trip. It was brimming with pre-vacation memory and desire (to paraphrase Eliot) and went something like this:
Pathetic
These red berries, fresh and vivid
in the morning light,
are full of longing.
The crazed hearts of the
seagulls are breaking
overhead.
Even the waves
are just going all to pieces
on the black rocks.
[The title refers to the New Critical principle (actually going back to Ruskin) holding that one should avoid the “pathetic fallacy,” i.e., the tendency to attribute human emotions to animals and things. I had fun violating it, though it’s such a hoary old bugbear I can’t really get much credit for “rebellion.”]
*
After I get done reading bedtime stories to Nicholas, I make a run to the local CVS for supplies. The windows are down, the crickets are chirping, and almost all the shops have closed early for Sunday night. After CVS, I head down the road looking for a gas station, so we’ll be ready to roll in the morning. Riding alone, I get just a pleasurable tinge, or maybe call it an echo, of “lonesome highway” summer melancholy. Back to the condo to do a few dishes, and then Suzanne and I settle in with our vacation books, enjoying the hush.
*
Something very pleasing about working (writing) late at night at a kitchen or dining room table, the day’s bright bustle yielding to the night’s thoughts.
Woke up to a bright, sunny morning with a glorious blue sky and white puffy clouds. We head down the road, past the Mashpee National Wildlife Refuge (we’ll have to save that for another trip) to South Cape beach. When we step out on the beach, which is on the “Atlantic” side (though actually it’s Vineyard Sound), it feels a lot more oceany than the Long Island Sound beach near our house in Branford. There’s a steady 20 mph wind blowing that was completely nonexistent back at the condo. Enough to blow away the sleeves of the folding beach chairs if they aren’t weighted down with rocks, and even to tip over the chairs themselves when no one is sitting in them. We layer up with shirts and sweatshirts and determinedly play with Nicholas’s new water wheel for about 10 minutes. Then Nicholas is cold, so he snuggles up in a towel with Suzanne to warm up and I get horizontal and try to absorb a little solar radiation via the few uncovered parts of my body (face, shins, feet). After we’re warm enough we make a few more trips with our pails and get the water wheel spinning vigorously. That achieved, we flee the beach itself and point the van toward the ocean (okay, Sound). Parked about 20 feet from the surf, we put some Marley on the cd player, open the sun roof, and settle in for a “picnic” lunch. In my mind, this officially inaugurates the van as “surf wagon,” a concept which points backward to my days as a beach bum in Ocean City, MD and forward to my anticipated purchase of my first kayak. Anyway, the “surf wagon” thing is important, so I tell Suzanne she has to humor me.
*
In describing lunch I left out all the nagging we had to do to get Nicholas to eat his turkey sandwich. But I also left out the poem he composed as we sat there:
the waves are in the sky
the fish are jumping up and down on the beach
everything’s all mixed up!
I’m a little biased, of course, but I think this is pretty good stuff for three years old.
*
Now the question arises of whether to put in all the potty training adventures this trip has involved so far (and I’m sure there are more to come). Dear Reader, I think I’ll leave them out. But here’s a Cape Cod riddle for you: What kind of canal experiences turbulence but has no boats? Alimentary, my dear Watson.
*
After nap, we head out under overcast skies looking for Sandy Neck Beach in West Barnstable. We possess the usual crude tourist map devoting lavish care to the locations of local businesses but with no concept of scale or proportion. And the little roads on the Cape can be pretty twisty, quite unlike the straight or gently curving lines on the map, so things always seem to end up being farther away than you expect. As we drive, the skies keep darkening, and it’s 4 o’clock by the time we get to the beach (the advantage here being that they stopped charging an entry fee at 3:30). Sandy Neck Beach turns out to be not so sandy, or rather, the sand is buried beneath lots of stones. Since I watched Nicholas while Suzanne got a nap (and Nicholas didn’t) I have earned a solo walk on the beach (we negotiate for “autonomy”), so I head off right away. The initial idea is that I’ll get some exercise, so I set a quick pace at first, but before long I’m sauntering (Thoreau would be proud). The beach may be covered with stones, but it turns out that they are pretty great stones, coming in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and colors. The overcast skies have “rent asunder,” as they used to say, with big rips and tears and pools of blue shining through, and the beach is wide and flat and good for walking if you keep your sandals on. The 20 mph wind from earlier in the day has either died down or never started up over here on the bay side. Soon my pockets are full of stones—milky translucent white, dark purple, pale green, lavender, and so on. Some are big, ovoid, and speckled, like the petrified eggs of some extinct beast. And the bands of clouds in the sky seem to be doing their best to match the grey-white portion of the stony palette, going from translucent white to slate grey to pale ash.
*
When I come back from my walk (just under 30 minutes) I feel like I’ve been somewhere. Nicholas comes running toward me gleefully as I come in sight of the beach towels and my heart leaps. We spend some mellow time hauling water in our pails and dumping it a little ways up the beach for no particular reason. And while I’m taking pictures of Suzanne and Nicholas a thoughtful stranger offers to take one of the three of us. The light starts to get that “magic hour” quality as we head towards dusk, and it’s nearly six by the time we leave the beach for dinner.
*
Trying to remember that poem I composed in my head before we even left for the trip. It was brimming with pre-vacation memory and desire (to paraphrase Eliot) and went something like this:
Pathetic
These red berries, fresh and vivid
in the morning light,
are full of longing.
The crazed hearts of the
seagulls are breaking
overhead.
Even the waves
are just going all to pieces
on the black rocks.
[The title refers to the New Critical principle (actually going back to Ruskin) holding that one should avoid the “pathetic fallacy,” i.e., the tendency to attribute human emotions to animals and things. I had fun violating it, though it’s such a hoary old bugbear I can’t really get much credit for “rebellion.”]
*
After I get done reading bedtime stories to Nicholas, I make a run to the local CVS for supplies. The windows are down, the crickets are chirping, and almost all the shops have closed early for Sunday night. After CVS, I head down the road looking for a gas station, so we’ll be ready to roll in the morning. Riding alone, I get just a pleasurable tinge, or maybe call it an echo, of “lonesome highway” summer melancholy. Back to the condo to do a few dishes, and then Suzanne and I settle in with our vacation books, enjoying the hush.
*
Something very pleasing about working (writing) late at night at a kitchen or dining room table, the day’s bright bustle yielding to the night’s thoughts.
posted by Steve Shoemaker at 5:31 PM
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