Cape Cod

On a rainy afternoon at the restaurant, I waited on a family of four, and they were all wearing jackets and T-shirts that said CAPE COD across the chest.  The two brothers had close-cropped haircuts and prominent cheekbones.  They looked like twins but aren’t.  The mother had pale skin and poofy dark hair.  I do not recall what the father looked like, but, together, they were the picture of a smart yet unpretentious family. 

I asked them if they planned to visit Cape Cod after their stop in Acadia National Park.  The mother explained they vacationed on the Cape every year, but this time they decided to spend a week in Maine and the rest in their usual haunt.  To fill the silence and try my hand at pleasant small-talk, I half-heartedly mentioned my curiosity to check out Cape Cod, so long as my schedule allowed, especially considering that I have only two days off and the fact that Cape Cod is at least a seven-hour drive from where I live on Mount Desert Island.  They then unleashed a wealth of recommendations.

The brothers took the lead and rattled off a list of towns:  Hyannis, Wellfleet, Truro, Provincetown.  He mentioned the bike trail, which used to be a rail line that extends from Nickerson State Park.  He asked me what I like to do, to which I responded I prefer a quiet hike over browsing in gift shops.  He suggested a few trails in what he called the national park, which is technically the National Seashore, governed by the same ilk of rangers that patrol and protect Acadia.  I briefly interjected with Thoreau’s name:  didn’t he write a book about the place?

“Well, yes,” one of the brothers said, “But the quintessential literature of Cape Cod is The Outermost House by Henry Beston.”

 

All these words spouted at such a rapid pace as though he had a time limit.  His excitement was evident in his speech. 

He said that the house was once a literary landmark that was later destroyed by a storm, and I had no idea what he was referring to exactly.  Then he segued back to Thoreau and remarked that his book was quite boring, especially in the middle, but boring for a specific purpose.  The brother then talked about the beaches, and, of course, the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard.  

Upon mentioning those famous destinations, the mother interrupted saying, “Well, remember, he’ll only have two days,” after which the brother told me about a hostel in Truro.  The prices, he said, were quite reasonable.

The family was so thorough and jubilant while they shared their tips that when we parted ways the thought entered my mind and would not leave:  that I must see this place. 

In addition to my conversation with the Cape Cod family, my expectations were influenced by my grandparents’ decision to spend their 50^th anniversary there.  My aunt made them an offer:  she would pay for their entire vacation and this was their chance to go anywhere in the world.  She suggested Greece so that my grandfather could visit his father’s homeland, or Ireland so that my grandmother could see the lands of her ancestors who gave her her skin prone to freckles and sunburns.  But, no, they turned down offers to visit the Parthenon and the seaside cliffs of a rebel island.  Instead, they opted to go to Cape Cod.  What beckoned them there?  How wonderful could a place be if it were advertised via unplanned purchases of gift-shop rain jackets?

Before I met the family of four, I was not sure what Cape Cod exactly was.  It existed in my mind, not as a place, but as a name only.  Cape Cod is a peninsula off southeastern Massachusetts.  The thin strip of land resembles a bended arm with a flabby bicep and cupped fingers curling inward toward the wrist.  Just to look at its shape on the map evokes enough inspiration to drive there.  There are parts of the Cape so narrow-looking that I questioned the ground’s solidity and wondered if the rising ocean could one day submerge a tract of land until the peninsula became a chain of islands.  The Cape was borne from glacial activity, and its shape changes with the barrage of the surf and shifting sands. 

Henry David Thoreau, the famous nature writer and author of Walden, visited Cape Cod in 1849 when there were no automobiles and, therefore, no paved roads.  He traveled by stagecoach and by foot.  Having lived purposefully in a cabin and canoeing the watery wilderness of northern Maine, Thoreau was no stranger to the woods, but he came to Cape Cod to get better acquainted with the sea.  He arrived in Cohasset after a violent storm that sunk a ship and drowned 150 passengers.  These were Irish emigrants seeking a new life in America, but many of them perished.  Thoreau observed the townspeople flocking to the beach in search of survivors and corpses.  Despite its beauty, this place has grown familiar with death.  He remarked that the locals didn’t seem entirely shaken up by the tragedy and interpreted the shipwreck as the unfortunate business of life. 

Undertakers had laid out about twenty caskets on the shore and were busy filling the wooden boxes with the dead and nailing the lids shut.  Thoreau watched one undertaker lift the cloth that was covering a dead girl.  Her skin was vampire-white, and her swollen corpse was battered and her skin ripped and shorn apart by sharp rocks.  Her tattered clothing did not conceal the exposed muscle and protruding bone.  The dead were stacked in boxes, children reunited with parents, or sisters joined in death.  Thoreau’s conclusions are rather surprising: 

On the whole, it was not so impressive a scene as I might have expected.  If I had found one body cast upon the beach in some lonely place, it would have affected me more.  I sympathized rather with the winds and waves, as if to toss and mangle these poor human bodies was the order of the day.  If this was the law of Nature, why waste any time in awe or pity? (Cape Cod 20-21)

Thoreau spotted a survivor on the beach and asked him a few questions, but the man had very little to say about the trauma.  The victims were so close to their goal——merely a mile from shore.  They dreamed of comfort, stability, and salvation in a foreign land that cared nothing of their plight.  It is only a man-made object, namely the lighthouse, that welcomes the weary sailor.  The tumultuous seas continue their own rhythm regardless of human endeavors.  The townspeople picked up the pieces that washed to shore, the ocean gained a new relic, and Thoreau headed up the road in search of a better view of the sea.

Nearly 75 years later, another nature writer, Henry Beston, arrived at Cape Cod with a similar goal in mind.  During one visit, he drew up plans to build a small house on the Atlantic side near the Nauset Lighthouse on the cliffs overlooking Coast Guard Beach.  His neighbor handled the construction, and Beston named the place the Fo’Castle.  Initially, he planned to use his two-room, ten-window beach-home for summer vacations and the occasional winter get-away, but instead he decided to live there for a year:

I went there to spend a fortnight in September. The fortnight ending, I lingered on, and as the year lengthened into autumn, the beauty and the mystery of this earth and outer sea so possessed and held me that I could not go. (Outermost House 10-11)

Although only a subgenre, written accounts of sane isolationists have always been popular reading fare from Thoreau’s cabin-in-the-woods contemplations of Walden to Chris McCandless’s off-radar treks into the Alaskan wilderness.  I am fascinated by those brave enough to abandon their routines, their jobs, and their social circles to live alone, partially to escape the excess, but primarily to confront the basic elements of their own humanity.  Often these wanderers wish to sit still, meditate, and process what they see.  Too often in our workaday rhythms, we are consumed by our own consumption, too focused on progress rather than the process.  After I’ve summited a peak, I constantly have to remind myself to appreciate the view, to stare at the world for just a little bit longer with nothing on my mind but blank appreciation. 

When Thoreau lived in his cabin on Walden Pond, he tended to overemphasize his isolation and independence.  Beston offers no such false pretensions.  He had his firewood and oil cans delivered by a horse-drawn cart via a sandy trail.  Twice weekly, a friend drove him by car to the nearby villages of Eastham or Orleans so he could go grocery shopping.  He often chatted with the man who lived in the Nauset Lighthouse.  In all likelihood, both men were in need of conversation to puncture the occasional loneliness.  Beston did not fully shrug off the conveniences of societal living, but his purpose that year was extremely focused.

“The world today,” he writes, “is sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water welling from the earth, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot.” (Outermost House 10) 

      

He observes the winged visitors, from the sparrows to the butterflies.  He watches the sand erode canyons into the dunes, while other beaches grow.  He gazes at the stars, notes where the snow falls and the ice thickens, and waits for the fog to roll in and then dissipate.  He studies the waves so closely the he writes an entire chapter on their patterns, shapes, and their sounds, all the way down to the carbonated fizzing of thin water wafting over the sand before its retreat into the sloshing ocean. 

There must be a fundamental human urge to sit on the beach because so many of us yearn to be there.  Office workers hang calendars that feature Caribbean palm trees and turquoise waters.  The colors are naturally soothing, and the sun provides far better lighting than harsh fluorescents.  But it’s more than the promise of relaxation.  The wind is redeeming, and the sea, viewed from a stable shore, is calming despite its tumultuous dance.  Beston built his house near the ocean to discover “the pulse of earth” that lies somewhere between Massachusetts and Spain——a sort of oceanic divide that sends waves both westward and eastward to crash upon the respective shores.

Beston settled on the beach to watch not only the ocean and its wildlife, but also the sun.  Despite the layers of sophistication Homo sapiens have donned since our primitive beginnings, we are still sun-worshippers.  After spending the day walking on beaches and touring lighthouses, Mandy and I sought a quiet spot to watch the sun go down, and we settled on a place in the sand of Race Point Beach. 

A lone sailboat stood out on the horizon.  The sky above the sand was clear, but a thin layer of clouds hung over the sea.  The sun dropped into a gap between two tufts of cumulous, and its rays filtered through the shadowy vapors and emanated prism-like until the strands of light washed gold a strip of sand and sea.  The sunset was soft and understated with only a hint of pink in the background.  The same sun had burned my feet earlier that day, and now here I was hunkered down in the sand and mesmerized by its display, a re-run that never gets old. 

Of this Beston says:  “[T]he adventure of the sun is the great natural drama by which we live, and not to have joy in it and awe of it, not to share in it, is to close a dull door on nature’s sustaining and poetic spirit.”   Even those who claim to hate the outdoors cannot deny themselves the opportunity to witness this daily spectacle.  Its descent is always malleable and its nuances dependent upon backgrounds that vary from a lighthouse by the sea or snow-capped mountains that turn pink at day’s end.  When I am working and living at seasonal resorts in the national parks, the sunset plays a crucial role in my schedule, much more so than it does in the city.  If I am to be out walking somewhere in the evening, I often scrutinize a map and find an ideal spot to take photographs during the magic hour. 

When I went to Massachusetts, this was no different.  I downloaded a map of the Cape onto my phone and sought out places to concentrate my time.  Of course, I wanted to see all of the Cape:  the old cranberry bogs, the famous lighthouses, the dunes, even the Pilgrim Museum in Provincetown, but I only had two days off to get acquainted with the place.  Before I left Mount Desert Island, I told myself not to do too much.  I strived to let one experience represent the summation of the place——the essence of what makes Cape Cod such a worthy destination. 

    

A seagull scoured the sand for food as a group of seals swam playfully by.  When the first seal popped out of the water, it looked right at me and then over its shoulder.  We were less than twenty feet apart, so close that I could see its nostrils.  The long-snouted face resembled a dog’s.  The seal was observing me as much as I was observing it.  A trio of least turns followed the seals as they hovered above the golden-tinted waters.  They glided over the sloshing waves and their chirps mingled with the wind and the surf.

I spent less than 48 hours on Cape Cod.  I was tugged away by the obligation to work and my inability to afford a prolonged trip in such an expensive area.  I was envious of Beston, who had the chance to experience the place before the word got out, worldwide, to visit these shores.  Despite its popularity, the Cape is not overrun and can be shared by wealthy golfers staying in deluxe resorts as well as frugal travelers who stay at hostels, hike the free trails, and have picnics on the beach.  I was struck by the balance of preservation and development on such a skinny parcel of land that was designed for everyone to enjoy. 

At popular vacationing spots, I often I try to avoid the crowds, never once convincing myself that I am part of the traffic jam.  I unjustly deem the others undeserving of inhabiting the same spot as me, and I complain about the thicket of tourists as though they are mindless drones flitting from gift shop to gift shop.  These thoughts are often borne from frustration over the inability to find a convenient parking place.  Perhaps the sea-breezes elevated my mood and filled me with a more positive outlook on strangers.  I came to see them as people, just like me, who came here deliberately to see place Thoreau claimed one can “put all America behind him.”

 

He must have meant quite literally that nearly the entire country is behind you as you stand on the beach and gaze at the Atlantic.  But Thoreau was also suggesting that this land was a place to forget about the business of America——the kind that causes premature gray hairs and sleepless nights.  People come here to develop——or deepen——their appreciation for such a vulnerable and beautiful coastline.  I grew attached to the Cape quickly and was sad to leave, even though I was returning to an equally beautiful destination in Acadia National Park. 

I came here expecting to find just another beach, the same kind I had visited as a kid summering in New Jersey, where the sandy shores seemed so tame and uninterrupted.  But the Cape is always being reshaped and redesigned, especially as you walk through the fog beyond the mountain-like dunes.  You reach the end of land where seals patrol the edges of the sea.  One pop its heads out of the water and stares at you with curiosity and fear.  You see only a small portion of the seal before the animal submerges and you are left with only the slightest impression of its vast blue world.