Day 357, Year 6: Trip to the Outer Cape
Date: Sunday, October 16, 2011
Weather: Windy, Partly Sunny, Temp in the Upper 60’s
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
We’ve sailed to Provincetown at the end of the Cape a couple a times, but I have never driven to the outer Cape until today. Mark had to work, but I went with Heather, Jed, and boys to the Wellfleet OysterFest. And I tasted my very first raw and fried oysters. When I was in early elementary school, my sister-in-law Sue from Massachusetts “encouraged” me to taste a fried oyster. I thought it was the most disgusting thing I had ever tasted and vowed to never eat another one . . . until today. Maybe Wellfleet oysters really are better than any others in the world, but after fifty-five year a self-imposed ban, I really enjoyed the oysters today. We went to the festival primarily because Heather was giving a talk at 10:30 am entitled, “Fisheries in Hot Water: How Climate Change Threaten New England’s Most Storied Industry.” Jed and I painted pumpkins, made oyster shell necklaces with the boys, watched a glass blower making an octopus, and ate roasted corn on the cob while Heather spoke. Then we all perused the artists’ stalls and had lunch together. Wellfleet looks like a charming little town, but we’ll have to go back when there aren’t so many people to experience it. Heather decided that I should see a part of the National Seashore while on the outer Cape, so on the way home we stopped at Coast Guard Beach near Nauset Lighthouse. According to Henry David Thoreau, this is where The Great Beach (of Cape Cod) begins. According to our daughter Heather, this is the dividing line where the current carries some sand north and the other half south. This started a conversation about a great article that Mark and I had just read in the Cape Cod Times. The article outlined how and why the National Seashore is vanishing at three feet per year and there were great illustrations showing how the shape of the Cape has changed over the past 6,000 years. I was telling Heather that I think we must have gotten the copy of the Times when we were in Martha’s Vineyard last weekend. Then she told me that, no, I didn’t get the paper last weekend. It was a copy of The Cape Cod Times from early August and the article was written by her. She had left the paper on the boat last week for us to read and I had read it and saved it for Heather to read because I was sure she would be interested. I guess next time I had better pay attention to the date of what I am reading and who authored it!
Our stop at the beach was a highlight of the day for me. The surf was rolling in and the sun was shining. Jonah had fallen asleep on the way, so Jed stayed with him in the van while Heather, Sam, and I went to the beach. We hadn’t been there long when another little boy came up to Sam and asked if he would like to build a sand castle with him. The little boy’s name was Luke and he announced that he was four years-old, and 90 percent of the way to five years. Sam is 75 percent of the way to five years-old, and the two boys slowly warmed up to each other and had a wonderful time building sand castles. Jed and Jonah joined us and the adults talked while the children played. Sam and Luke were like two peas in a pod, but unfortunately Luke was here visiting from New York. As we were leaving they were making plans for seeing each other again next year.
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