The Outermost Girl

While I was still living at Tudor City, The Outermost House arrived in the mail, part of a traveler’s book exchange I had long forgotten about. I carried the slim paperback from place to place with me, never cracking the worn spine until this January when I found it in a box I had shipped to Moloka’i.

The Outermost House was a small, simple structure built on the dunes of Nauset Beach in Eastham, and as I read Henry Beston’s 1928 memoir, I was swept up in his description of living on the Atlantic ocean. That I had a vacancy in my housing situation after returning to the mainland was perfect timing. I had become enchanted with Wellfleet, the wrist of the Cape Cod's long arm and by chance, one town north of Eastham.  I wasn’t aspiring to update Beston’s beautiful portrait of that moody year and half on the ocean. Mostly, I was motivated by a sentimental urge to elongate the meager vacation weeks I have spent on the eastern shores these past few Augusts. 

My first introduction to the ocean, any ocean, was the great 40 mile Cape Cod National Seashore, a memory kept alive year round in our house by an enormous oil painting of J.F.K. standing with his Ray Bans, khakis and a turquoise blue polo shirt on what is, most likely, a Hyannis beach. My father bought it right off the wall at Carbone’s Restaurant in Hopkinton, MA during one of the few times we dined out as a family.   I remember that night, the decisive twinkle in his eye as he left the booth and we saw him walk over to the manager. That painting hung above the kitchen table, and over the years, the dining room and the top of the stairs, always a reminder of August.

For six summers, we vacationed in Truro, where my father’s family had also spent their summer. Throughout my life, the recollection of those weeks has heartened me, acting as a refuge from other things I don’t want to remember.  A few years, I thought about buying one of the campground cottages on Martha’s Vineyard, and I struggled in that decision, but the Cape is a tie that binds – having held fast to that blue collar, Yankee sensibility, sandy dirt roads that lead you off the beaten path to glacier kettle ponds and marshy oyster beds and small sized cottages that are truly just for summer enjoyment, rented year to year, passed on from generation to generation.  

I drove straight from New York City and the set of a TV pilot I had been working on, hurling off Route 495 onto the entrance of the Bourne Bridge while Bob Segar crooned “We’ve Got Tonight”. It could have been 1984, driving to Harwich in the Taylor’s tricked out Caprice Classic station wagon.

Suzanne didn’t have her license, but she had the Chevy, and all of us would take turns driving it through our junior and senior years of high school.  In my mind’s eye, I can see Robin, Suzanne, Karen… all of sixteen or seventeen years old, trying to hold our breath as a precaution just in case the bridge collapsed into the water, laughing through gulps of breath once we spanned the other side of this solid, iron and steel structure that plopped you at the Upper Cape Cod rotary and the familiar Christmas Tree Shop.

At Exit 1, bogs were shimmering with their singular cranberry color.  Daffodils and forsythia were in their familiar blooming shades of yellow. The glow of green buds had not yet appeared on the oak trees that line the rural parts of 6A, leaving the bark naked and gray, arms reaching towards the sun, supplicant, wishing it to warm up already.  For the past two weeks, the temperature has been at war, fluctuating between 45 and 70 degrees.  

I have rented a small cottage at the bottom of a development named Cassick Valley Way. There is no valley, just a ditch separating the house from the bike path, thick with saplings and fallen leaves and I learn from the note left on the refrigerator, ticks. It is bright at this time of year, before the leaves fill in, due to a huge skylight that extends over the open kitchen-dining-living room.

I wanted to see the ocean as soon as possible. Being near water always calms me. Even amidst the noise and haste of New York, I would be noticeably out of sorts if I missed a day walking Pepper along the East River.  Our nearest beach is Lecount Hollow, about a mile away, past PB’s French Bistro, the South Wellfleet General Store and the entrance to the Cape Cod Rail Trail, a bike path that runs 22 miles from Wellfleet to Dennis.

In the small parking lot at Lecount, four SUVs were parked facing the ocean. The sun hadn’t quite set behind us, leaving the daylight to linger and encouraging Pepper to bound down the steep, sandy incline that acts as an entrance to the beach.

A large piece of driftwood has been laid gently across the seat of an old wicker chair, sitting stoically at the bottom of the incline. With this exception, the beach is free of any footprints. Perhaps the outgoing tide had erased the evidence of walks taken earlier in the day; but it left an old lobster pot, lying abandoned in a low tidal pool. This is a great find – perfect for 75 Cassick Way’s #4 cottage. 

Without thinking, I splashed in, getting my shoes and the bottoms of my jeans soaked, struggling to drag it to higher ground, a sand bar that separates us from the rocky beach.  Small barnacle clusters covered the wood, the numbers “8901” were branded on the top. This must be the owner’s license number, I thought to myself.  I was dismayed to discover that its naked appearance belies how heavy the wood and netting actually is. There is no way this would be part of my take away treasure. 

Later that week, in the same place, I found an old anchor chain, covered with large rocks glued to the metal from the years spent at the bottom of the sea, and again, the tide would conspire against me as I dug out the chain with my bare hands and tried to pull the damn thing out of the wet sand, surrendering it until the next low tide, hoping someone would recognize it for the find it was.  

By the time I reached the parking lot, my pants have a salt line and I was talking aloud to no one in particular.  Two cars roll down their windows. “There’s an old lobster pot down there if one of you want it”. I smiled. They smiled back and roll their windows back up. Maybe this happens all time.

I arrived at the end of April’s first week, not considering how long and lonely the first two weeks would feel, the time it typically takes me to settle into a new place and create a routine. I am a conundrum unto myself. I strive to create community, but position myself in the outermost places, such as Moloka’i, Wellfleet, and even Kip’s Bay.  When I ran this idea past Robin, she said… “I don’t know… sounds like you’re isolating out there.” I can’t really argue. I don’t know anyone here.

As it turns out, I don’t think that will be a problem. The town is filled with interesting and loquacious people who love to talk story.  I have received two dinner invitations, joined a yoga studio and am on a first name basis with the librarians, one who stayed open after hours helping me choose a new book and registering my own Clam Card to borrow it with. And of course, having a poodle that hugs strangers doesn’t hurt.