An incurable early bird, on the last morning of our little weekend getaway I found myself unable to sleep and so decided to get up and read and gaze out of the sliding glass doors of our room at the Sea Shell Motel in Dennis Port on Cape Cod. It was about 40 minutes before sunrise and there was an intense yellow orange glow on the horizon.
As sunrise approached I decided to bundle up in my coat and my new Norwegian wool hat with ear flaps and walk down to the windy beach to take some pictures and enjoy some early morning solitude. It was the best moment of the day.
Thoughts turned to beloved grandparents who lived in Dennis Port, just up the street. When I was little we stayed with them at their house but sometime in the late 1980s, when my own children were little, my grandmother’s health problems became such that staying in a motel nearby became necessary. There’s no way to count the times we have stayed at the Sea Shell in the past 30 years or so. Each room is unique and charming, well-worn but clean and comfortable. No frills, just a short wooden walkway over the dune to the beach, the sounds of waves breaking close by.
I wanted to come here for old times’ sake. So often on this recent trip nature would vividly illustrate the simple truth that nothing is solid in the boundless flow of time and place, there is nothing to grasp. It was here that my grandparents embraced me with abiding wisdom and persisting love. But now they are long gone, even though I feel their presence still. The waves break on the sand and disappear and yet are still there, like the voices of my small curious children. Cape Cod is slipping into the sea.
The photographs are breathtaking!
Thank you, Laurie!
Barbara, your thoughts and pictures are always a treasure that I cherish.
Many thanks, Janet. And our friendship is a cherished treasure to me.
So beautiful, Barbara. No, nothing is forever. It’s all fluid, isn’t it? Just like the sea.
Thank you, Robin. It is all flowing and the sea is the greatest gentle reminder of that for me…
How beautiful! The pictures are very peaceful, and I really like your reflections on the fluid nature of time. So it is. And we just need to flow with it. Sometimes it is a tad nostalgic to journey in familiarity, yet knowing things have changed.
Thank you, Tiny! How often I have to remind myself, it is what it is. Sometimes we must pause and listen to the echoes of nostalgia and feel that tinge of regret even as we decide it’s time to stop clinging to the past, to move forward and keep on flowing gently in the stream of time.
So true Barbara!
The next time I visit the east coast of the U.S. will be these places you described in these posts. Thanks for sharing such wonderful photos. But who knows when I’ll be heading that way again, albeit I wish not too long. 🙂
I’ve been enjoying your posts about your travels through New England this fall, Arti. So many places around here I haven’t been to yet even though I’ve lived here almost all my life. I dream of seeing the Pacific Ocean and the west coast some day – one never knows… 🙂