Saturday, May 05, 2012

Anticipation...


The parking lot at Ballston Beach is wide open but for one truck.  Sand spills out onto the pavement. Tiny laminated signs are stapled to fencing, poking up through the dunes, pleading with walkers to protect the fragile grass and monarch butterflies.

The timpani of the ocean on the other side quickens my pace over the windswept path to the great horizon, outlined by the changing turbulent color of the sea.  It is a vast and amazing site that never ceases to stun me with gratitude. 

I have not been on this beach since I was a young teenager. We loved the surf here, higher than any we had ever jumped around in before, toes grazing the ocean floor while the swell carried you high and deposited you three feet from your spot, pre-boogie board style.

The water remained about a foot high during the low tides, and we would lie down on your belly closer to shore, leaning on elbows or crawl out, catching the waves as they rumbled in, rolling down through the dips in the ocean floor every six feet or so, causing a diminishing effect before breaking up entirely on the shore line. 

The serenity of the solitary shore was a siren’s call to which the ocean responded moodily.  High tide was four hours away, but waves were tumbling in with the tide, faster and more ferocious than on other parts of the National Seashore.  This is what made Ballston one of our favorites, the unpredictable Mother Nature, the reason our parents warned us before going into the water “Respect the ocean… and watch the undertow”.

It was on this beach that the ancestors of these waves carried my brother Phil away.  He was just eight years old that June, the youngest in the crowd of children packed into the Volvo.  When we finally heard my sister say, “Where’s Phil?” my friend stood up from our little tidal pool, shaded her eyes and pointed out towards the sun.  His head was bobbing out there. Way, way out there. We cupped our hands together and yelled his name, but I don’t think he would have been able to hear us.

My older brother Frank and his friend Paul orchestrated a rescue, first running in the water as fast as they could and then hurling themselves into the swells, badly butterflying their way towards Phil. I think Mark Spitz was still quite popular then, as was his signature stroke.

It was low tide after all, but getting past that first round of waves was a heroic feat. After that, the three of them walked in to shore where we stood in a line watching. Our family friend, aptly named BIG JIM for his enormous size, puffed on his Newport 100s nervously and shouted at all of us. No one was exempt.   Big Jim & Mary were old family friends visiting us from Harrisburg, PA.  I don’t know how Jim drew the short straw, but he was here, looking after all of us on his own. We were nine children total, ranging in age from 8 to 16. 

For his own four, it was their first time ever to the ocean. By the time Frank, Paul and Phil hit beach, Jim shouted, “Don’t you ever do that again! Ever!” his voice boomed out, and he practically hurled us toward the car. Afternoon over.

That night, the four adults stood admonishing us, Jim with the threat of his belt, stomping up and down the stairs to show us just how upset he was. "I’m going to get the belt if that EVER happens again". At some point, my mother and Mary started laughing, covered their mouths, and slunk into the kitchen, leaving us kids crowded on the beaten up couch with my father and Jim pointing fingers, sweating and threatening “The Belt”.

At breakfast the next day, my mother sternly said to anyone who was in listening distance, “You will not take your eyes off of your father or Big Jim. You will not go out over your waist. You will hold on to your younger brother’s hand”.

But despite these explicit instructions and the threat of Jim’s enormous belt, Philip was swept out again.  That was the last time we came to Ballston… ever. 

I'm trying to remember where exactly we were, where the blanket and cooler of Schlitz was laid out, but it was over thirty years ago, and I cannot recall the spot. I only remember seeing Phil's head and his little hand waving at us, off on his seaward adventure.

There is no treasure to be found today, with the exception of a broken piece of a brown Labatt’s bottle and the shell of a Mylar balloon. The glass I toss back into the ocean. It is not soft and sanded down enough for a proper sea glass find. There, by the balloon trapped in the sand, small footprints lead off the beach, towards the high house on the northern side of the parking lot. A small voice is tossed down by the breeze as if to match the prints.

The beach is almost naked. No footprints save the child’s, no rocks, stones or shells either, just soft warm sand and high cliffs sheltering nesting plovers who quickly fly back and forth over the water, darting into invisible habitats. 

On the highest cliff, men are taking off the shutters of a house facing the southeast. It is the last week of April, and people are starting to open their houses for the summer. Restaurants, hotels, cabins, campgrounds and shops are all prepping for May 1st, with new coats of paint and annuals spilling out of wine cask planters. 

May, I believe, marks the beginning of the season. The temperature has dropped again to 50 degrees, but the sun belies the cold front, and the light has changed accordingly to an early summer sky, with a twilight stretching out past the eight o’clock hour. 

The depressions in the beach had changed during our walk, and natural berms were beginning to catch the tail end of the white foam before it stripped back to the sea.  The clouds were like a cartoon train has puffed them out.   You're always on a curve on the ocean side of Cape Cod, there is a mystery around the corner, and each beach is different, has it's own personality.

Tuesday, May 01, 2012

April's End * Wellfleet, MA

  

I have been let in to a secret club, witnessing this old whaling town unfold itself and embrace the divinity in a season's change. The weather is too terribly romantic. Smoking chimneys keep the chill at bay, houses' driftwood gray blend into the overcast skies with bright colored tulips as a striking contrast.  These are the kind of days when I would skip high school, driving out to the ocean just to say hello.

For most of April, Route 6 has been devoid of traffic. Signs on old roadside motels sport large V A C A N T letters, although The Wellfleet Motel distinguishes itself with a “Squeaky Clean” promise on its sign.

Lecount Hollow Beach
I want to revisit all of the places I discovered last year and see how they differ in the off-season.  Following Main to Commercial Street and out to Mayo Beach, all the galleries, the fish markets, Emack & Bolio's Ice Cream; almost everything is shuttered for the season with hand printed signs cheerfully sporting either “See You Next Summer!” or “Opening After April 20th".  About ten vendors brave the elements at the famous weekend flea market hosted in the Wellfleet Drive-In's parking lot looking at present, like an over sized garage sale.

By the town pier, the winter wind has toppled the “E” from the “Pearl” Bistro sign atop the roof.  Fishermen are at work. I can see their trucks parked on the sandy bottom of the marsh as I cross the Herring River bridge.  They are out with the tide, harvesting, dragging traps and buckets behind them.  

The briny smell of seaweed is so strong that when I open my mouth, the coats the top layer of my tongue.  Pep and I are walking around an inlet called The Gut towards Great Island Beach, but it is the smell a rotting carcass of a dolphin that makes my eyes smart as we make our way over the path ofe tumbled reeds towards the sound of the ocean.The skin is blackened as if been burned by the sun.  Congealed blood creeps along the edges of the exposed rib cage.  The tail is gone, a bony stump remains. It doesn’t make sense to me that this dolphin should be so far away from the ocean, alone, caught in the marshy low tide and not able to get out. One of the shopkeepers told me that 180 dolphins beached themselves this winter, and 120 died; cause unknown.

Two hawks have been hovering in concentric circles around Sgt P. With those ears and the way he bounces along, I’m sure he looks just like a bunny just in time for Easter. I wave my arms and yell, “SHOO! SHOO!”, but that tactic fails. They continue to glide in circles above us.  The winter beach is seagull turf and when we reach the dunes, the hawks float off in the distance towards the sanctum of the pine trees, past the big empty house facing Provincetown. The windows have not been boarded up like most residences. The house has been left exposed and uncloaked, free for anyone to peek inside.

The tide is low, but the waves are moody, and don't offer the same stretches of sandbars that the longs days of summer bring with it. The late April waves have thrown up big rocks and broken shells and rough sand out of the depths. I read today that a boy in Oregon found a soccer ball belonging to another little boy in Japan. I have always had that childhood fantasy - finding that message in a bottle, a stranger to connect with across the sea, like the transatlantic telegraph cable that lies between the United States and Europe.

I take the boardwalk back, avoiding the death.  The hawks return their steady spirograph flight plan, snaking their way towards us.

The Wellfleet Market closes at 4:00 PM until May 1st, and I make it just in time for the manager to let me in, but she quickly locks the door after me repeating, "We close at 4!”   You can tell by the organic aisle, the stocked books fresh off The New York Times bestseller list, and the variety of magazines, that this town has a liberal majority. Whenever I see multiple cork boards in towns advertising drum circles, free yoga and lectures, I expect to hear Pete Seeger singing for peace at the traffic light.

Past the market and next to the Lighthouse Grill is the Spirits Shoppe & Package Store. There are white plastic chairs lined up four and four on each side of the doorway. Men of all ages are shooting the breeze. People wave from cars and say hello.  One man on the far end holds a folded paper and pencil in hand. As I cross the street to the church parking lot with my tomatoes, I hear a boy behind me shout from his car "Hey, you need help with the puzzle?"

At the end of the week, the temperature rises to 80 degrees. The earth smells like it is composting itself, cracking open the acorns and heating up the late spring bulbs. Surfers have taken off their wetsuits. With this change in weather comes glorious sunsets.

We went to the Great Island Beach about 7:15 tonight, just as the tide was coming in and twilight was leaving the sky a pale sea glass blue, a color that is one of the rarest to find. Pink bottomed clouds stretch out across the horizon. “Red sky at night, Sailor’s delight…” I think to myself.    At the big house, the sun's descent is firing off the panes of glass as if the entire place is about to go up in flames.



Shameless Crushes...

find life experiences and swallow them whole.
travel.
meet many people.
go down some dead ends and explore dark alleys.
try everything.
exhaust yourself in the glorious pursuit of life.
-lawrence k. fish

Yoga For Peace

read much and often

Cleopatra: A Life
Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Never Let Me Go
The Angel's game
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Bel-Ami
Dreaming in French: A Novel
The Post-Birthday World
A Passage to India
The Time Traveler's wife
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Catcher in the Rye
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Kite Runner
Eat, Pray, Love
Slaughterhouse-Five
Les Misérables
The Lovely Bones
1984
Memoirs of a Geisha


read much and often»