Shoulder Season on Cape Cod
Tiffany-blue hydrangeas and shingles on saltboxes grayed from ocean air housing Tramp art mirrors and hand-looped rugs with nautical themes are beacons of home, like guiding beams from peppermint-striped lighthouses. Fraught, fractured family relations are sullied by too much Fox News, cheap booze, and thinking as antiquated as a longing for whaling or trawling cod from depleted seas. Wrap-around porches with screen doors that shush instead of slam overlook marshes dotted with tall nesting platforms to encourage ospreys, and stout boxes filled with gawd-knows-what to rid the peninsula of the miserable greenhead flies that swell the sun-charred flesh of picnickers. Foggy evenings mean quahog chowder and tepid microbrews in taprooms overseen by bosomy carved figureheads from long disused boats, while blue-sky middays find hands busy with lobster rolls crunchy from celery and sand, and freshly churned, wild blueberry ice cream topped on made-to-order waffle cones.
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I’m an off-season, mid-week adventurer. Competing for reservations, standing in line, or sitting in traffic is a non-starter for me. Growing up on Cape Cod, living in NYC or Napa Valley meant working when others visited, reveling in the quiet beauty of my backyard only after the throngs depart. We slipped onto the Cape before high season begins in earnest, when the weather is balmy, and the Atlantic just barely warm enough for a salty dip, but before the crowds and humidity of July and August makes it feel like practicing Bikram yoga in a packed studio while experiencing a menopausal hot flash and sucking a ghost pepper every fucking day.
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We hiked the incomparable National Seashore, watched the sky change and the Common Terns nest, collected shells, and gorged on briny Wellfleet oysters, smoked bluefish pâté on shitty white rolls, and the sweetest steamer clams dragged through melted butter. The local radio stations play the same classic rock of my stoned youth, with Boston on heavy rotation: “It’s more than a feeling, when I hear that old song they used to play, I begin dreaming…. When I’m tired and thinking cold, I hide in my music, forget the day, and dream of a girl I used to know, I closed my eyes and she slipped away.”
