Herring Cove 2/5/11

It’s February, grey, cold and windy here at Herring Cove Beach in P-town today. Not as cold as it’s been though, in fact, rain is expected, after so many weeks of snow that in this week alone, over one hundred roofs have collapsed across the state of Massachusetts due to heavy accumulations of snow on flat rooftops. The television news has, of course, been all over that, the drama, they love it. The parking lot here, usually coated with cars even in winter, people inside gazing out, trancelike, is empty today, covered instead, with ice. There are only two cars here now, at two in the afternoon on a Saturday, my Subaru, and a big green Tacoma pick-up. Then there’s something else, a man peddling a three-wheeled vehicle of some sort, very low to the ground, his legs sticking straight out in front of him, as he peddles and slides over the lumpy ice. He has a small red flag extending up from the rear of his vehicle, flapping wildly in the wind, while two flashing red lights blink back and forth, like those lights on kids sneakers, directly behind the two sides of his butt, lest you miss him underneath, and drive right over him, I guess. He wears a helmet and has two carrying sacks on either side of the flashing red lights that appear to be full. Of what, I wonder. Food? Collected rocks? You could just reach over and pick rocks and shells right out of the sand from that thing if you were so inclined. Water? Cigarettes? No, clearly he’s an athlete of some kind, it’s freaking cold out here, and the ocean, though not at high tide, or at peak wildness at the moment, still could not be described as calm, the wind is picking up plenty of whitecaps out there. No, he’s not out for the fun of it, a little light exercise, he’s on a mission of some sort. But is he handicapped, training for something, recuperating from an injury? One thing is sure, he is intrepid, by my standards.

In contrast, I am still in my car, but I have come out to this end of the Cape, as I often do in winter, because it reminds me both that I am actually, viscerally, alive, and also of why it is that I say that I love living on Cape Cod. Because sometimes, I forget. Sometimes it feels like such a small and insular world here that I can hardly believe that this is actually where I hang my hat. But when I come out to any one of the spectacular landscapes like the one directly in front of me, that abound here on Cape Cod and walk, or just look, or even, sometimes, just close my eyes and listen, I remember. I don’t just remember why I love this place, I remember that I love living and breathing and seeing and listening. I am Home again, and grateful. Last week it was a long walk out through the snow and ice-covered wetlands with my husband to a bench at the edge of Cape Cod Bay at the Wellfleet Audubon Preserve. Other times, like today, I just go alone and find some spot to look out at, maybe close my eyes for a bit and listen to the wind.

Alone, of course, is a relative statement, even out here at this time of year. Though there are few other humans here today, there are a hundred or so seagulls, outside my car, all lined up and facing in the same direction, like bowling pins, looking, like me, out to sea. What are they looking at I wonder? Are they watching the waves considering when it will be the right time to re-enter? Are they all watching that one big seagull out in front, waiting for him, or her, despite having grown up and lived most of my life around the ocean, I still haven’t learned to tell the male gulls from the females, to make the first move? With all of them sitting around here like spectators waiting for a sporting event, I only see one of them out there actually in the water, on the waves. What’s different about that one? Why is he out there alone? Brave? Stupid?? Ostriacized? Anthropomorphosizing, that’s what the man behind the counter in the liquor store said is the word for imagining that animals are thinking human thoughts. You know, it’s Provincetown, everyone fancy’s themself a performer, a writer, an artist, or wants to be, except the fishermen, the few that are left, which is a story, or many, for another day.

Today there’s not a single soul is out here actually walking on the beach either. We did get to see the sun for a few brief hours at the start of the day, but now, just after midday, it’s disappeared and an icy rain is beginning, hitting the windshield with an angry sound as if each drop was a tiny frozen spitball, intentionally thrown just to be annoying. What’s the word for giving human thoughts and actions to nature? Naturomorphosizing? But I thought it was nature that gave us the capacity to have thoughts to begin with. Well that’s just an endless spiral now isn’t it? I think I’ll just close my eyes and listen to the rain.