“Cape Cod is a number of things, and it means a number of things to me....”
First of all there is the land, the bounteous and the beautiful land, and then there is the beautiful and bounteous sea that surrounds it. And there is the special way in which the land and the sea respond to nature and her varied seasons. There are a thousand colors and a thousand variations of each; there are a thousand moods and you never know which one to expect. You only know that the land and sea are there and that there is no dullness in them.
AT THE RISING OF THE SUN
It was the strange half-light between yesterday and today. From an intricate network of twisting, turning roads you could follow the headlights of the cars as they moved from all points of the compass toward the dark outline of the hill. The moist air formed diadems of light around the headlamps and their beams sparkled from the gleaming, rain-washed street. Sometimes the cars swerved to avoid a branch or bush that had been tossed in their path by the gale winds of the night. Sometimes the lights picked out some strange creature of the night as it scurried into the brush beside the road, alarmed at this unlooked-for intrusion upon its domain.
At length each car was in place upon the hill. There was still no activity upon the Main Highway below which snaked its way down past Quivet and Sesuit to the Outer Cape. The wavering lines of street lights that from a distance twinkled through the branches seemed to grow weaker as the night shadows were replaced by a silvery grayness. The rain ended but the storm was not over. There was wind, howling across the Bay from Manomet, tossing the flexible pines into confusion, rattling the branches of maple and scrub oak that were thick with new buds, making conversation nearly impossible among people who were otherwise occupied anyway in clutching their billowing coats about them. There was the Bay, lashed now into a white fury with huge combers breaking out of a gray-green sea all along shore. You could hear the sound of them as they hit the beach. In contrast to the Bay the lake below looked peaceful, cold but peaceful, and a circling gull above it rode with the wind. He did not move his wings nor did he make any sound. It was cold all right and you could tell it by the look of the trumpeter as the first notes of the grand old hymn broke across the hills. Although no sun showed at the horizon, the sky above it showed rosy hues and the swift-moving scud overhead revealed patches of blue that had not been there before. The wind tore rudely at the pages of the hymnals but from the group clustered in the lee of the stone tower the notes came loud and true.
Soon you could tell for sure that the sun was up from the sea at Chatham and that it was to be, after all, a wonderful day. Off across the woodlands toward the Sound the trees began to cease their agitation and the sun’s rays pierced the clouds to play about them. Along one side of the Bay the long, low fore-arm of the Cape became visible as though it had just then emerged from the sea; opposite, the cliffs of Manomet were majestic and purple in the morning light.
As the light increased the air became clearer and there was a new softness in it. There was a softness and a wonderful fresh taste and you knew it was spring. The pale sleepiness had gone from the faces of the people as it had from all the earth and in its place there was new color that could have been born of the wind or of this special day. Finally, the cars, that had groped their way up the hill through the night-shadows, turned down the hill and along the twisting roads where the first sunshine was already drying the roadside pools. The roads were clean and the season was new and you could see the symbols of the age-old hope and promise all about you.
So, at last, all the cars were gone and Scargo Hill was left alone to drowse away the first early hours of a bright new day. Below on the highway the street lights had gone out and, one by one, so had the night lights in the old white houses along the way. From some houses the first, gray curls of smoke from a morning fire drifted upwards. And Easter Sunday, at the rising of the sun, had come to the Cape.
NOR’EASTER
Sometime in a Cape November there will come the first real Nor’easter, punching an effective period to the end of Fall. Then the winds come roaring out of the northeast to whip the waters of the Cape into a white frenzy and howl around the corners of old houses. These are the winds that rattle the store signs along Main Street while torrential rains beat against the plate glass windows and the shoppers are not there. It is a time to spend indoors, huddled up to the warmth of stove or open hearth, while the sturdy Cape houses settle down into the wind to weather it out. Above stairs the old houses yield gently to the wind in a motion that is reminiscent of the roll of a ship at sea. Like the ship, they will ride out this storm as they have many another throughout a long two centuries.