I’m no stranger to the sea shore. Growing up less than a quarter mile from Cape Cod Bay, the beach was my earliest playground. For a boy, the vast extension of the low tide flats in Brewster was a place of wonder and fascination. Digging clams, catching crabs, chasing small schools of fish in the shallows, and checking to see what was left in Clint Eldridge’s weir after he’d harvested it, occupied summer days. I probably spent more time at the beach back then than I did at my house.
For a variety of reasons, I rarely go to the beach anymore. I find the summer crowds difficult to deal with. Parking is impossible most days. Having to have a resident beach sticker for another town is another impediment. So basically I’ve mostly stayed away from the beach, preferring less crowded ponds for cooling off in the summer.
And so it was a bit out of character when, a few weeks ago in January, I decided to take a walk on the beach. It was late in the afternoon. The temperature was brisk under gray skies, and perhaps because of that, I was alone. There were tracks indicating that people had been their earlier in the day, but as I walked along the tide line, I saw no one. I breathed in the fresh sea air and remembered long ago days when my father would take me to the winter beach to pick up drift wood for the fireplace. Other than a kerosene stove in the kitchen and a gas floor furnace in the living room, the fireplace was the only heat in our house. Several times a week after school, we would take the dog, jump in the old Plymouth and head down to the deserted beach parking lot near the house. It was rare that we ever saw anyone else. My father would walk with a piece of canvas to carry the wood. I followed him playing soldier in the dunes with the dog. At a point where he couldn’t carry any more wood, we’d retrace our steps back to the car and go home. I remember seeing an occasional dead blackfish up on the shore. A few frozen turtles and the carcasses of dead seabirds, sometimes a goose or duck, were mixed in with the seaweed along the wrack line for my inspection. In those days, you could find lengths of rope, boards, wooden barrels, fishing gear, sometimes a splintered boat – all sorts of things that were salvageable. If he was lucky, my father would pick up some usable planks and would tie them on the roof rack of our car. When he eventually had enough, he used them to put in the floor of my bedroom.
On this January day the sea was calm. Gentle swells rustled the small stones along the shore. It was the only sound I heard other than a dog barking in the far distance. Across the bay I could see the vertical spike that was the Provincetown monument. Some sea ducks floated on the high tide reminding me of a raft of decoys that lured unsuspecting water fowl into a hunter’s gun sights. It was clear that the tide was on the ebb and the small, jelly bean-like, round stones in the sand still glistened with moisture in the fading sunlight. I put a few in my pocket along with some small scallop shells. Up from the high tide line and in the shadow of the dunes, I noticed single spindles of beach grass marking the sand in perfect circles where the wind had bent them. Nearby, small flat stones were elevated on wind-blown pinnacles of sand. It was like a min-version of great monoliths I’d seen in Utah. A gull soared over my head, perhaps curious as to what I was looking at.
Reaching back across time, I saw myself as a red-cheeked youngster bundled against the cold, my father with his canvas heavy with wood across his shoulder, and my first dog. They were special days
and a chance for me to revisit a time and place I hadn’t been for a while. Leaving the beach that day, I promised myself that I would do it again – soon.
