Cape Cod Journal, Part IV
Wednesday 6/14
You want to explore new territory on vacation but you also want a certain repetition factor so you will have some “sure things” to count on, and so you can get the pleasure of feeling at least a little bit like you know the lay of the land. So today we go back to Nauset, because we had so much fun there on Monday, and particularly because Nicholas was so into “zooming” and “skating.”
When I wrote about that previous visit, I forgot to mention the seals, four of them swimming together with their heads out of the water about twenty yards offshore. Today we see a few more, including a bold, curious fellow who is only about twenty feet offshore, clearly checking out a few human swimmers braving the frigid water to frolic in the surf.
After a while the wind kicks up and our umbrella pops right out of the sand and starts tumbling end over end down the beach. I sprint after it, and it feels kind of good to get the old fast-twitch muscles firing again. I realize I just never sprint any more. Maybe I should take up soccer or tennis again—except for the little matter of my knees…and oh yeah, my back.
*
After the beach we drive up to Wellfleet, on a mission to check out Herridge’s, a wonderful little used bookstore we had been to before. On the way up, with little sparks of recognition flying off various landmarks, it gradually dawns on us that we have left one previous trip to the Cape out of our accounting, so that this is actually our fourth visit rather than our third. The first was maybe fifteen years ago, back when we lived in the South but made semi-annual pilgrimages up to Maine. One year we had detoured over to the Cape, camped in Brewster, and biked the Cape Cod Rail Trail. The next visit, the one we left out, must have been (we decide) the summer of 2001, and we stayed in a little motel just south of Wellfleet. That’s the year we discovered Herridge’s, and then we returned to the store on our third trip, two years ago, when Nicholas was a little over a year old and we stayed in Yarmouth. It’s funny the way the different years can end up fusing and blending and blurring if you don’t keep track (thus, the journal experiment this time).
So today’s bookstore run is our third, and it turns out that the store has changed owners since the last time. It still looks almost exactly the same, but with the addition of a friendly old black lab who greets each new visitor to the store. I come away from this visit with Nohow On, a collection of three of Beckett’s late “novels,” from Grove Press; Tom Clark’s book of poems from Black Sparrow, Like Real People; Bruce Chatwin’s posthumous collection of essays, Anatomy of Restlessness; Susan Minot’s novel Monkeys; and an old paperback of Thoreau’s Cape Cod (because I left my copy at home and want the book with me, even though I probably won’t have a chance to read much of it before we leave). Suzanne has been brushing up on her French a bit, so she picks up a little French/English dictionary and Alain-Fournier’s Le grand Meaulnes. Nicholas scores a few books, too, though the children’s section is rather weak.
For dinner, we stay in Wellfleet and go to the not very creatively named, but very popular, Bookstore and Restaurant. The bookstore is closed when we get there, but the restaurant is open and very good. By now, some serious vacation logyness is setting in so we decide to limit ourselves to appetizers and salads. The littleneck clams in herb and butter broth are fresh, tender, and tasty, but some herb in the mix is not quite to our liking. The mussels in spicy marinara sauce are excellent, and the salads are really exceptional, especially my Caprese with basil and fresh mozzarella.
You want to explore new territory on vacation but you also want a certain repetition factor so you will have some “sure things” to count on, and so you can get the pleasure of feeling at least a little bit like you know the lay of the land. So today we go back to Nauset, because we had so much fun there on Monday, and particularly because Nicholas was so into “zooming” and “skating.”
When I wrote about that previous visit, I forgot to mention the seals, four of them swimming together with their heads out of the water about twenty yards offshore. Today we see a few more, including a bold, curious fellow who is only about twenty feet offshore, clearly checking out a few human swimmers braving the frigid water to frolic in the surf.
After a while the wind kicks up and our umbrella pops right out of the sand and starts tumbling end over end down the beach. I sprint after it, and it feels kind of good to get the old fast-twitch muscles firing again. I realize I just never sprint any more. Maybe I should take up soccer or tennis again—except for the little matter of my knees…and oh yeah, my back.
*
After the beach we drive up to Wellfleet, on a mission to check out Herridge’s, a wonderful little used bookstore we had been to before. On the way up, with little sparks of recognition flying off various landmarks, it gradually dawns on us that we have left one previous trip to the Cape out of our accounting, so that this is actually our fourth visit rather than our third. The first was maybe fifteen years ago, back when we lived in the South but made semi-annual pilgrimages up to Maine. One year we had detoured over to the Cape, camped in Brewster, and biked the Cape Cod Rail Trail. The next visit, the one we left out, must have been (we decide) the summer of 2001, and we stayed in a little motel just south of Wellfleet. That’s the year we discovered Herridge’s, and then we returned to the store on our third trip, two years ago, when Nicholas was a little over a year old and we stayed in Yarmouth. It’s funny the way the different years can end up fusing and blending and blurring if you don’t keep track (thus, the journal experiment this time).
So today’s bookstore run is our third, and it turns out that the store has changed owners since the last time. It still looks almost exactly the same, but with the addition of a friendly old black lab who greets each new visitor to the store. I come away from this visit with Nohow On, a collection of three of Beckett’s late “novels,” from Grove Press; Tom Clark’s book of poems from Black Sparrow, Like Real People; Bruce Chatwin’s posthumous collection of essays, Anatomy of Restlessness; Susan Minot’s novel Monkeys; and an old paperback of Thoreau’s Cape Cod (because I left my copy at home and want the book with me, even though I probably won’t have a chance to read much of it before we leave). Suzanne has been brushing up on her French a bit, so she picks up a little French/English dictionary and Alain-Fournier’s Le grand Meaulnes. Nicholas scores a few books, too, though the children’s section is rather weak.
For dinner, we stay in Wellfleet and go to the not very creatively named, but very popular, Bookstore and Restaurant. The bookstore is closed when we get there, but the restaurant is open and very good. By now, some serious vacation logyness is setting in so we decide to limit ourselves to appetizers and salads. The littleneck clams in herb and butter broth are fresh, tender, and tasty, but some herb in the mix is not quite to our liking. The mussels in spicy marinara sauce are excellent, and the salads are really exceptional, especially my Caprese with basil and fresh mozzarella.
posted by Steve Shoemaker at 1:02 PM
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