Noon — is the Hinge of Day — Evening — the Tissue Door — Morning — the East compelling the Sill — Till all the World is ajar — ~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #1060)
4.1.20 ~ treasures in the sand
On Wednesday we went down to the beach earlier in the morning and found it less populated and more peaceful. Chilly, but wonderful! Staying connected with family and friends and even feeling better physically. Full of gratitude.
4.1.20 ~ looking east
4.1.20 ~ looking west, New London Ledge Lighthouse and Tyler House
4.1.20 ~ looking north, Zbierski House
4.1.20 ~ looking down
4.1.20 ~ specks of garnet in the sand
4.1.20 ~ solitary tree, Thames River
Spring! Back at home in my garden, the chionodoxa (glory of the snow) are out! What a cheerful greeting and welcome home. ❦
The first wish: to see my granddaughter fall in love with our beach. We went in the evening during a recent overnight visit and she loved it so much we decided to come again the next day. 🙂
7.29.19 ~ Katherine using a cookie cutter to make hearts in the sand
In the evening it can feel like one has the whole beach to oneself.
a bucket full of love!
We got up bright and early the following morning to beat the crowds and the heat of the day.
7.30.19 ~ turns out Finn is a morning person like his Grammy
7.30.19 ~ Katherine is still a night owl, like most of the family, but she didn’t mind getting up early to go back to the beach
~ Katherine met another early visitor to the beach and I wondered what they were talking about ~
So after spending some time with both her children on the wet sand near the water, and then nursing Finn, Larisa took off with Katherine to show her all the magic and wonder of this special beach where she grew up. She showed her how to catch hermit crabs, put them in her bucket, and let them go again. And many other things. Grandpa & I tended to Finn, who was fussy and ready for his morning nap.
But first Grandpa wanted to show him a few things, too.
Our little towhead. When I was little I had blond hair, too, and could not get used to people calling me “Blondie” wherever I went. That bothered me for some reason, until my grandmother told me it made me look Norwegian, like my ancestors. As soon as I started liking my blond hair, when I was a teenager, it darkened to a light brown. And that, as my mother would have said, is how the cookie crumbles.
~ I think I need my nap now, Grandpa ~
7.30.19 ~ rocking Finn to sleep on Eastern Point Beach ~ using my body and two hats to keep him in the shade
The second wish: to rock my grandson to sleep one more time. I had been sorely missing all those naps he took in my arms those first months of his life. (Swaying back and forth with my feet in the sand is much easier on the back than rocking on a hard floor was.) He was a day short of 9 months old and quite an armful!!!
My snuggle bug slept for over an hour and Grandpa kept him in the shade by periodically adjusting the chair and the hats and a towel ~ I treasured every moment of this long nap
When Finn woke up he was in a fabulous mood. The concession stand opened at 11:00 a.m. so we left the sand and headed to Tyler House to enjoy some ice cream on the shady porch. It was very hot and humid but the sea breeze and being out of the sun was just what we all needed.
7.30.19 ~ our darling Larisa and her precious little ones
It was such a wonderful couple of days. And I admit, I did shed a few tears when they left later that afternoon. I hope next time Dima will come, too!
Next stop was Inch Beach! Another location where part of Ryan’s Daughter was filmed.
2.4.18 ~ Inch Beach, Kerry, Ireland ~ the scenery was indeed breathtaking
Inch or Ínse meaning Sea Meadow (Oilean Ínse – Island of Inch) is best known for its impressive Blue Flag beach. It offers miles of golden sand and breathtaking scenery showcasing mountain, beach, valley and sea. Standing on the beach, the 360 degree panoramic view before you encompasses the McGillycuddy Reeks, Rossbeigh Beach and the northern shores of the Ring of Kerry, Dingle Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, the Slieve Mish Mountains which form the backbone of the Dingle Peninsula and the magnificent sand dunes that stretch along this amazing sand spit. A majestic setting, which has inspired artists, poets, writers and was chosen as the location for the Hollywood films Ryan’s Daughter and Playboy of the Western World. ~ GoKerry website
2.4.18 ~ another adventure with her Papa
2.4.18 ~ sand, sea and sky as far as the eye can see
2.4.18 ~ Inch Beach, Kerry, Ireland
2.4.18 ~ Katherine drawing on the sand with Papa
2.4.18 ~ amazing vistas even if my family was all looking down for shells
2.4.18 ~ it’s good to know there is still much beauty left on earth
2.4.18 ~ uncounted shells, beauty in the small details
2.4.18 ~ time to turn around and walk all the way back to find lunch in the restaurant on the right
After a nice long meandering walk on Inch Beach we had lunch in a crowded beach restaurant. The parking lot was full so some cars were parked right on the sand. And so we were off to our next destination where I encountered my first Irish forest.
In October my sister and I spent a couple of nights at the Nauset Knoll Motor Lodge in Orleans on Cape Cod. The big draw was that the motel had a short path to Nauset Beach, a ten mile stretch of seashore facing the open Atlantic. We could hear the waves from our motel room. Pure joy!
eternity
Wildlife sightings: from the road we saw wild turkeys and a coyote; hopping across our path to the beach we saw a bunny; and at the beach we saw gulls of course, and a little plover running along the water’s edge, and a seal bobbing in the waves.
parallax
One afternoon we spent two hours meandering on the beach. Nothing but sand, sea and sky as far as our eyes could see. Beverly, the geologist, was collecting stones, and I was taking pictures. And contemplating the universe, the oneness of all things.
Being awake. Resting in the happening of this moment, exactly as it is. Relaxing the need to understand or to make things different than they are. Opening the heart. Just this — right here, right now. ~ Joan Tollifson (Resting in the Happening of this Moment)
posing
infinity
We already have everything we need. There is no need for self-improvement. All these trips that we lay on ourselves — the heavy-duty fearing that we’re bad and hoping that we’re good, the identities that we so dearly cling to, the rage, the jealousy and the addictions of all kinds — never touch our basic wealth. They are like clouds that temporarily block the sun. But all the time our warmth and brilliance are right here. This is who we really are. We are one blink of an eye away from being fully awake. ~ Pema Chödrön (Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living)
yawning (no sound)
dune grass
Few places on the earth possess a nature so powerful and so unspoiled that it would remind anyone living in a concrete world that he once belonged to a pre-industrial civilization. ~ Liv Ullmann (Changing)
adolescent gull
ebb and flow
a young gull
sandscape
weather worn
windswept
It was windy and chilly and we were bundled up well. I even wore my mittens when I was not taking pictures. But eventually it was time to go back to our room and get ready for dinner. So back up the path to the motel. Our window was the one on the right in the white section of the building. There are only 12 rooms. A quiet, beautiful, windswept place to stay.
view of our room from the path leading to the beach Nauset Knoll Motor Lodge, Orleans, Massachusetts
view from our room, a hill with a path through the brambles, the parking lot and the beach are between the lawn and the water
Race Point Beach ~ 10.10.15 ~ Provincetown, Massachusetts
One evening on our Cape Cod trip we went to Race Point Beach in Provincetown to see the sunset. It felt so good to be outside in the salty air, walking on the sand.
Tim at Race Point Beach ~ 10.10.15 ~ Provincetown, Massachusetts
Race Point Beach ~ 10.10.15 ~ Provincetown, Massachusetts
Race Point Beach ~ 10.10.15 ~ Provincetown, Massachusetts
after sunset at Race Point Beach ~ 10.10.15 ~ Provincetown, Massachusetts
I will never forget this trip to Cape Cod with my dearly loved husband of 40+ years. Until 2008 we used to come here all the time – summer vacations and weekend getaways. Sadly, Tim’s grandparents’ house in Provincetown was sold that year and my grandparents’ house in Dennis Port was sold in 2009. Our last trip, to bury my father’s ashes in October 2013, was all too brief.
Race Point Beach ~ 10.10.15 ~ Provincetown, Massachusetts
We did, however, go to Provincetown in May 2009 to celebrate our anniversary and stayed at a bed and breakfast called The Black Pearl. It’s no longer there, we discovered, the house now owned by someone else. We took a long walk on Beech Forest Trail. Six long years since that visit. The town and the seashore have changed. So have we. But we still found healing there, and peace. I think it will always be a place where we will free to be ourselves in times of transition. It will always feel like home.
Race Point Beach ~ 10.10.15 ~ Provincetown, Massachusetts
The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth, it can lie down like silk breathing or toss havoc shoreward; it can give
gifts or withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can sweet-talk entirely. As I can too,
and so, no doubt, can you, and you.
~ Mary Oliver (A Thousand Mornings)
Race Point Beach ~ 10.10.15 ~ Provincetown, Massachusetts
One of our favorite stops on Cape Cod is Marconi Beach in Wellfleet, part of Cape Cod National Seashore. The last time we were here was in May of 2009 and we were a little startled by how much of the sand scarp had eroded away since then. We knew the Cape had been hit hard by severe storms the past few winters but somehow we still weren’t prepared for how much of the bluff was now missing.
The Marconi Area obtained its name from the famous Italian inventor, Marconi. From a site here, Marconi successfully completed the first transatlantic wireless communication between the U.S. and England in 1903.
Here, the outer beach is famous for its then steep, forty-foot sand cliff (or scarp) located behind it. Swimmers and beach walkers feel a sense of solitude here because the scarp and ocean provide an unbroken, pristine natural scene in all directions.
The uplands above the beach slope gradually westward, and provide a graceful vista of both the bay and sea horizons of this portion of the Cape. A platform above the Marconi station site enhances this view, and offers vistas southward to Eastham, and northward to Truro.
The Marconi operation at this location was initiated by the young inventor in 1901. However, in December of that year, due to a number of setbacks, he had to use temporary facilities on St. John’s, Newfoundland to prove his theory – wireless could cross the Atlantic! Meanwhile, a new station was built in Nova Scotia while repairs were being made to the Wellfleet station, and the first two-way, transatlantic wireless message was made at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, on December 17, 1902. Not long after, the Wellfleet Station was ready, and on January 18, 1903, Marconi staged another world’s first (and a bit of a media event) by successfully transmitting messages between the president of the United States and the king of England. With rapid advances in technology, the station became outdated in a matter of a few years, and was replaced by a newer station in Chatham, Massachusetts.
~ Cape Cod National Seashore website
looking out over the Atlantic Ocean ~ Marconi Beach 10.11.15 ~ Wellfleet, Massachusetts
All of these pictures were taken from the top of the scarp. When I was a very little girl, my father and I were standing somewhere near here when he explained to me that if we sailed east all the way across this ocean from here we would end up in Spain. I remember being very impressed. 🙂 I think of that conversation every time I come here.
peering over the scarp, but not standing too close ~ Marconi Beach 10.11.15 ~ Wellfleet, Massachusetts
looking down (40′ or 12m) at the beach at a spot where we were allowed to stand a bit closer Marconi Beach ~ 10.11.15 ~ Wellfleet, Massachusetts
Notice some metal debris, part of the viewing platform now missing, in the picture above. And below, notice the asphalt walkway, abruptly ending at the new edge of the scarp.
part of a missing structure ~ Marconi Beach ~ 10.11.15 ~ Wellfleet, Massachusetts
looking north towards Truro ~ Marconi Beach ~ 10.11.15 ~ Wellfleet, Massachusetts
new railings along the scarp over the ever changing Marconi Beach 10.11.15 ~ Wellfleet, Massachusetts
It seems no matter how solidly we humans think we may build, no matter how strong the foundation, nature will eventually reclaim what we leave behind. Everything is flowing. Nothing is permanent. Somehow we know this and yet, when the ocean delivers this message so dramatically and suddenly in our own observing lifetimes, it comes as a sharp reminder, not always easy to receive.
perhaps this sign might need an update? ~ Marconi Beach 10.11.15 ~ Wellfleet, Massachusetts
Province Lands 10.10.15 ~ Provincetown, Massachusetts
This is another of those strangely potent places. Everyone I know who has spent any time on the dune agrees that there’s, well, something there, though outwardly it is neither more nor less than an enormous arc of sand cutting across the sky. ~ Michael Cunningham (Land’s End: A Walk in Provincetown)
Almost every time we go to Provincetown we go on one of Art’s Dune Tours to see the Province Lands sand dunes of Cape Cod National Seashore. In the past part of the tour took us down on the beach but we couldn’t do that this time due to severe beach erosion caused by storms the past couple of winters. So we had to be satisfied with exploring the dunes themselves. Unfortunately we weren’t able to book a sunset tour – those have been our favorites over the years.
If I die tomorrow, Provincetown is where I’d want my ashes scattered. Who knows why we fall in love, with places or people, with objects or ideas? Thirty centuries of literature haven’t begun to solve the mystery; nor have they in any way slaked our interest in it. Provincetown is a mysterious place, and those of us who love it tend to do so with a peculiar, inscrutable intensity. ~ Michael Cunningham (Land’s End: A Walk in Provincetown)
Pilgrim Monument, in the distance, is 252 feet high
a little tourist from Switzerland
words left on a shingle in the dune
Our guide kept showing us where the sands have been shifting in recent years, impressing on us the endless flow of nature. How strange that while present there, time seems to stand still, if only for a moment.
Blue Marble image of North America by NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring
In the belly of the furnace of creativity is a sexual fire; the flames twine about each other in fear and delight. The same sort of coiling, at a cooler, slower pace, is what the life of this planet looks like. The enormous spirals of typhoons, the twists and turns of mountain ranges and gorges, the waves and the deep ocean currents – a dragonlike writhing. ~ Gary Snyder (A Place in Space)
Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have a clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule. ~ J. R. R. Tolkien (The Return of the King)
Contemplating the lace-like fabric of streams outspread over the mountains, we are reminded that everything is flowing — going somewhere, animals and so-called lifeless rocks as well as water. Thus the snow flows fast or slow in grand beauty-making glaciers and avalanches; the air in majestic floods carrying minerals, plant leaves, seeds, spores, with streams of music and fragrance; water streams carrying rocks both in solution and in the form of mud particles, sand, pebbles, and boulders. Rocks flow from volcanoes like water from springs, and animals flock together and flow in currents modified by stepping, leaping, gliding, flying, swimming, etc. While the stars go streaming through space pulsed on and on forever like blood globules in Nature’s warm heart. ~ John Muir (Meditations of John Muir: Nature’s Temple)
“Connecticut Shore, Winter” by John Henry Twachtman
Searching my heart for its true sorrow, This is the thing I find to be: That I am weary of words and people, Sick of the city, wanting the sea;
Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness Of the strong wind and shattered spray; Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound Of the big surf that breaks all day.
Always before about my dooryard, Marking the reach of the winter sea, Rooted in sand and dragging drift-wood, Straggled the purple wild sweet-pea.
