Cape Cod and This Life

Got back last night from a five-day camping jaunt on Cape Cod with the family and had my first shower since Thursday. My roommates were all still at work and I had the apartment to myself. So I did what any normal person would do: laundry. And naked time. And blogging. Not necessarily in that order.

We gave the mommers the birthday CD we'd recorded of us performing church hymns and folk songs that she used to sing to us when we were young. Beth's friend let us use his equipment, and, for the skill and rehearsal we possessed at the time of recording, I think it came out decently. Well, it made her cry, and that's what we were going for. I think Beth said she specifically chose and arranged the songs for that sole purpose. Heh heh heh.

We made it to Nausset Light Beach for low tide a couple of the days, and the waves, though small, had good form. So we were able to take my father's old relic of a surfboard out. After smashing up jaw and kneecap with failed attempts, I was able to get up a couple times. So I am satisfied with my efforts. But Oh My Gosh does it take the life out of you. Now that I don't have field hockey to keep my arms in shape, I am thinking that I seriously have to train because they were WIMPY.

There's something about the ocean THE OCEAN that makes you feel your place in the universe so keenly: tiny, weak, fragile, and yet somehow, you are at your strongest there too, when you are connected to all the waters of the planet and you can feel the source of all life flowing around you. When you are in that wave, when you can channel that power of the water and tide into your own motion. And then you think of the first surfers and you sort of marvel at how awesome Mother Nature is that we have and are such brilliant creatures. I like what he says about play, “the product of an inventive brain and a restless mind.”

We collected pretty rocks and made up arbitrary rules, like that Rosie could only pick up green ones. Well I think she actually made that one, but Em and I enforced it and gave her every green rock we saw.

Saturday, everyone went on a bicycle ride along the CCRT from Dennis almost to Nickerson and back. BEAUTIFUL. We passed through cranberry bogs, woodlands, sunny meadows, and little kettle ponds that resulted from melting chunks of the glacier that formed Cape Cod as it retreated. If you don't know the geological history of the landform, you should check it out... it's fascinating. Anyway, along the trail, we happened upon my new favorite thing in the universe. Yes that is correct: bicycle rotary. Combining two of my other favorite things. Bicycles and rotaries.

Also, I learned to ride with no hands. No, more descriptive would be to say that I tried to learn. This mainly consisted of me saying wahhhhh and accelerating linearly and laterally, my oscillations becoming more and more amplified (please listen to the music and amazing narration) until they forced me to grab the handlebars or take a digger or worse.

Sunday, my brothers and sisters and I walked along a boardwalk through the marshes by the Sandwich Town Beach. There were all these kids catching crabs with chicken legs tied to pieces of string, the captured crustaceans scuttling around in buckets of salt water. “We're selling crabs!” “No we're not!” There was some debate, apparently, as to the purpose of the activity. Further out we got to a bridge where everybody was jumping off into a deeper area of the marsh. Kevin, Em, Rosie, and I jumped in (except that I was like that crab bait – chicken, and jumped last of all of us). The picture makes it look so peaceful and serene, and it was, but just imagine it with about 300 times more kids, yelling and laughing, running up and down the channels in the marsh grass with small nets and floaties, and streaming through the air from the railing right at the crest of that bridge. It would be a miracle to be a kid growing up there.

Each of these milestones of the summer, each of these things I have been looking forward to for months has been gradually approaching and then falling away into the my own history, to be savored as sweet memories. Weddings, travels, events... I try to absorb it all up to saturation for those brief moments of immersion, but it just seems like time goes by faster and faster the more you live. Last night I said goodbye to a dear friend who is moving from Boston tomorrow for a career opportunity. She'll surely be missed. Life is so bitter bitter sweet.

Time to move my wizard calendar to August.

Thanks to kelly - PTT for the image of Sandwich Boardwalk. You can check out her site here.