Cape Cod Journal, Part III
Monday 6/12
We drive north to Orleans and take in two beaches today: Nauset (ocean-side) and Skaket (bay). Spend most of the day at Nauset since Nicholas loves the waves, which were probably the most forceful he has ever seen. We aren’t there for more than ten minutes when a rogue three-footer takes him by surpise, knocking him down and rolling right over him. He pops right out of the water (which is frigid) saying “No lifeguards needed!”
*
Skaket is a return visit, a beach we remember with deep fondness from two summers ago when Nicholas had just begun to walk and run. When the tide is out (we get lucky and hit it that way again today in the late afternoon) there is an immense tidal flat, with tidal pools, sandbar islands, and lots of clear, shallow water to play in. Nicholas makes “ocean cakes” with “lucky mud” and gets in some work on his Frisbee toss, which is not bad at all. It’s clear most of the day, with a few clouds thrown in but also another late breakout for the sun.
*
After the beach, we hit The Lobster Claw in Orleans for the first lobster of the trip, realizing as we pull up that we’ve been there before. The lobsters are excellent—even the claws are sweet, which in my experience is often not the case. I doubt if this place had dark greens in the salad two years ago, but they do now, and that’s progress (the good kind). The elderly couple at the next table are enraptured with Nicholas, and he oblingly spends much of dinner with his neck twisted around to face their table. They have been coming to the Cape for 53 years. She was a schoolteacher, and still has dreams about lessons she meant to teach the kids that she didn’t get around to. Somehow she/they also raised eight kids, six girls and two boys. She gets confused, thinking it’s six boys and two girls, and her husband has to remind her, gently. Later in the meal I hear her asking again, “How many boys was it?”
*
Thinking back to Nauset, in the waves. Nicholas was completely exhilarated, bright-eyed and squealing with pleasure. I had the feeling once again, as I have so many times before, that the beach is a place that makes me feel totally alive and at ease in my skin. Only this time the feeling was refracted through Nicholas, and thereby intensified. We could barely keep him out of the water even after he was shivering like crazy. He talked about letting the waves “zoom” him (can’t wait to teach him to body surf one day), and he particularly liked the sensation of standing still and letting the surf rush past his legs as it receded from the beach. He called this “skating.”
*
Before bed, Suzanne and I get to watch an episode from our “Borg Fan Collective” DVD set, a collection of most of the Star Trek episodes (whatever the show) featuring the Borg. This one is from Voyager, which kicks STNG’s ass.
Tuesday 6/13
We drive south today, to W. Falmouth, and check out Wood Neck beach, which is smallish and lovely, with a real “local” feel (at least now, when we’re not quite into “the season”). This is another stony beach, but the setting is picturesque and mellow, even hushed. A photogenic white-and-grey cumulus cloud bank is piled up to the north in a Maine-like effect (as Suzanne points out), and the water flaunts a few different shades of blue and green. You have to cross two parallel bands—one of broken shells and one of good-sized stones—to get down to the water, but once you’re there it’s shallow and clear, with the same sort of sandy, rippled bottom (no stones) we had over on Skaket yesterday.
*
On the other side of the parking lot is another beach and a little marshy area with a network of tidal pools and streams perfect for small kids. A bunch of families who seem local are hanging out, and several boys of seven or eight are running around with nets catching little crabs and generally playing naturalist/explorer. This is the warmest water we’ve encountered on the Cape so far (the waters at the southern end are warmed by the gulf stream), meaning it’s warm enough, even in June, for us erstwhile Southerners actually to immerse ourselves. Best of all there’s a channel of water maybe three feet deep and eight feet across at its widest that makes a good swimming hole for Nicholas to work on his floating and rudimentary swimming strokes. Some other kids have masks and snorkels and Nicholas is very interested in those.
*
We picnic out on the deck tonight with a nice spread from Roche Brothers, a great supermarket just around the corner. Nicholas and I have a little time before dinner to get outside with the “fat bat” and knock the ball around a little (though he cries if I try to take a turn hitting).
*
I find myself thinking about the different kinds of beaches I have known at different times of my life. From childhood until I was about 22, the beach meant Ocean City, MD. When I was little, before boogie boards existed, my father and I would ride the waves on hard rubber inflatatable rafts (not the soft plastic kind) pumped up to be as stiff as we could possibly make them. I’d drag him back into the water again and again and we’d ride for hours. By the end of the day your eyes would be burning from the salt and your nipples would be rubbed raw from the hard rubber (later causing extreme pain in the shower). Lying in bed at night waiting to go to sleep, tired and happy after a whole day in the water, you’d have a ghost sensation of surf tugging at your legs.
As soon as I graduated from high school I moved to Ocean City with a bunch of friends to work for the summer (and then came back for the next two summers). The beach was still about waves, but also about sun and girls in bikinis. We lived up around 27th street and the beach there was dense with the young, exposed, broiling flesh (sunblock? never heard of it) of college kids down for the summer (we called ourselves “locals” to distinguish ourselves from weekend tourists, conveniently ignoring the existence of the real locals). My friend Wingbat and I spent long hours perfecting the art of bodysurfing—with our arms at our sides and our heads sticking up like periscopes (not blindly down in the water like some fools) we could thrash any wave O.C. had to offer. Occasionally we would use our technique to attempt to meet girls, “accidentally” crashing into them in a pretended loss of control. So many people were clueless about the waves, getting bounced around willy-nilly, that this was somewhat plausible.
After we met in grad school, Suzanne and I took our first vacation together at the Outer Banks, off the coast of North Carolina. Like Cape Cod, this is an exposed spit of land, but the water is much warmer, the beaches are composed of fine, soft sand, and the whole scene was much mellower and more paradisiacal than what I was used to. We camped right on the beach and had sun all week, so that by the end we were heading off the movies, desperate for an escape from its rays.
Our first jobs out of grad school took us to Charleston, SC and we lived just outside the city in Mount Pleasant, near two wonderful islands: The Isle of Palms and Sullivan’s Island. If you wanted a little more “buzz,” with waves, bikinis, snack shop, bars, etc. you went to Isle of Palms. If you wanted a gentler, quieter, more mellow experience you went to Sullivan’s Island. Each was a lot of fun in its own way, but Sullivan’s Island probably left the deeper mark on us, and Suzanne and I still talk about going back for a visit some day. We have some indelible memories of floating in that mild water watching the sunset slowly turn everything pink and gold.
We drive north to Orleans and take in two beaches today: Nauset (ocean-side) and Skaket (bay). Spend most of the day at Nauset since Nicholas loves the waves, which were probably the most forceful he has ever seen. We aren’t there for more than ten minutes when a rogue three-footer takes him by surpise, knocking him down and rolling right over him. He pops right out of the water (which is frigid) saying “No lifeguards needed!”
*
Skaket is a return visit, a beach we remember with deep fondness from two summers ago when Nicholas had just begun to walk and run. When the tide is out (we get lucky and hit it that way again today in the late afternoon) there is an immense tidal flat, with tidal pools, sandbar islands, and lots of clear, shallow water to play in. Nicholas makes “ocean cakes” with “lucky mud” and gets in some work on his Frisbee toss, which is not bad at all. It’s clear most of the day, with a few clouds thrown in but also another late breakout for the sun.
*
After the beach, we hit The Lobster Claw in Orleans for the first lobster of the trip, realizing as we pull up that we’ve been there before. The lobsters are excellent—even the claws are sweet, which in my experience is often not the case. I doubt if this place had dark greens in the salad two years ago, but they do now, and that’s progress (the good kind). The elderly couple at the next table are enraptured with Nicholas, and he oblingly spends much of dinner with his neck twisted around to face their table. They have been coming to the Cape for 53 years. She was a schoolteacher, and still has dreams about lessons she meant to teach the kids that she didn’t get around to. Somehow she/they also raised eight kids, six girls and two boys. She gets confused, thinking it’s six boys and two girls, and her husband has to remind her, gently. Later in the meal I hear her asking again, “How many boys was it?”
*
Thinking back to Nauset, in the waves. Nicholas was completely exhilarated, bright-eyed and squealing with pleasure. I had the feeling once again, as I have so many times before, that the beach is a place that makes me feel totally alive and at ease in my skin. Only this time the feeling was refracted through Nicholas, and thereby intensified. We could barely keep him out of the water even after he was shivering like crazy. He talked about letting the waves “zoom” him (can’t wait to teach him to body surf one day), and he particularly liked the sensation of standing still and letting the surf rush past his legs as it receded from the beach. He called this “skating.”
*
Before bed, Suzanne and I get to watch an episode from our “Borg Fan Collective” DVD set, a collection of most of the Star Trek episodes (whatever the show) featuring the Borg. This one is from Voyager, which kicks STNG’s ass.
Tuesday 6/13
We drive south today, to W. Falmouth, and check out Wood Neck beach, which is smallish and lovely, with a real “local” feel (at least now, when we’re not quite into “the season”). This is another stony beach, but the setting is picturesque and mellow, even hushed. A photogenic white-and-grey cumulus cloud bank is piled up to the north in a Maine-like effect (as Suzanne points out), and the water flaunts a few different shades of blue and green. You have to cross two parallel bands—one of broken shells and one of good-sized stones—to get down to the water, but once you’re there it’s shallow and clear, with the same sort of sandy, rippled bottom (no stones) we had over on Skaket yesterday.
*
On the other side of the parking lot is another beach and a little marshy area with a network of tidal pools and streams perfect for small kids. A bunch of families who seem local are hanging out, and several boys of seven or eight are running around with nets catching little crabs and generally playing naturalist/explorer. This is the warmest water we’ve encountered on the Cape so far (the waters at the southern end are warmed by the gulf stream), meaning it’s warm enough, even in June, for us erstwhile Southerners actually to immerse ourselves. Best of all there’s a channel of water maybe three feet deep and eight feet across at its widest that makes a good swimming hole for Nicholas to work on his floating and rudimentary swimming strokes. Some other kids have masks and snorkels and Nicholas is very interested in those.
*
We picnic out on the deck tonight with a nice spread from Roche Brothers, a great supermarket just around the corner. Nicholas and I have a little time before dinner to get outside with the “fat bat” and knock the ball around a little (though he cries if I try to take a turn hitting).
*
I find myself thinking about the different kinds of beaches I have known at different times of my life. From childhood until I was about 22, the beach meant Ocean City, MD. When I was little, before boogie boards existed, my father and I would ride the waves on hard rubber inflatatable rafts (not the soft plastic kind) pumped up to be as stiff as we could possibly make them. I’d drag him back into the water again and again and we’d ride for hours. By the end of the day your eyes would be burning from the salt and your nipples would be rubbed raw from the hard rubber (later causing extreme pain in the shower). Lying in bed at night waiting to go to sleep, tired and happy after a whole day in the water, you’d have a ghost sensation of surf tugging at your legs.
As soon as I graduated from high school I moved to Ocean City with a bunch of friends to work for the summer (and then came back for the next two summers). The beach was still about waves, but also about sun and girls in bikinis. We lived up around 27th street and the beach there was dense with the young, exposed, broiling flesh (sunblock? never heard of it) of college kids down for the summer (we called ourselves “locals” to distinguish ourselves from weekend tourists, conveniently ignoring the existence of the real locals). My friend Wingbat and I spent long hours perfecting the art of bodysurfing—with our arms at our sides and our heads sticking up like periscopes (not blindly down in the water like some fools) we could thrash any wave O.C. had to offer. Occasionally we would use our technique to attempt to meet girls, “accidentally” crashing into them in a pretended loss of control. So many people were clueless about the waves, getting bounced around willy-nilly, that this was somewhat plausible.
After we met in grad school, Suzanne and I took our first vacation together at the Outer Banks, off the coast of North Carolina. Like Cape Cod, this is an exposed spit of land, but the water is much warmer, the beaches are composed of fine, soft sand, and the whole scene was much mellower and more paradisiacal than what I was used to. We camped right on the beach and had sun all week, so that by the end we were heading off the movies, desperate for an escape from its rays.
Our first jobs out of grad school took us to Charleston, SC and we lived just outside the city in Mount Pleasant, near two wonderful islands: The Isle of Palms and Sullivan’s Island. If you wanted a little more “buzz,” with waves, bikinis, snack shop, bars, etc. you went to Isle of Palms. If you wanted a gentler, quieter, more mellow experience you went to Sullivan’s Island. Each was a lot of fun in its own way, but Sullivan’s Island probably left the deeper mark on us, and Suzanne and I still talk about going back for a visit some day. We have some indelible memories of floating in that mild water watching the sunset slowly turn everything pink and gold.
posted by Steve Shoemaker at 9:20 AM
2 Comments:
How lovely.
I feel like I just went on vacation, too.
Yeah, and my rates are better than Travelocity too! :)
Post a Comment
<< Home