WCAI | A Cape Cod Notebook Archives

by Robert Finch

December 2007

A Local Gathering Place
Usually I go out on the flats alone, or at most with one or two companions. Frequently I meet friends out there whom I've not seen in months. We smile and say, "Small world," but it's not, really.

Thinning the Woods
Almost immediately, I found myself the victim of competing claims. For instance, some of the most obvious candidates for cutting were also some of the most visually interesting trees.

Beach Foam
Rivers of sand twisted down the banking, leaping up over the more resistant outcrops of clay and splaying out at the bottom in wide deltas.

Wind Music
At times it seemed like ghost dancers were skipping across its surface; at others, the channeled wind moved swiftly like giant hands and fingers playing upon some kind of watery instrument.

November 2007

The Secret of Life
In November, the abandoned nests have not yet been torn to pieces by winter storms. They emerge to our sight in the crotches of trees like old hairy coconuts, or else dangle from the stripped branches like small dance purses carelessly flung up into some tree after the party was over.

Reflections at Dusk
The sun has just set clear, and the myriad interlaced branches of the oaks grow first dark, then black against the dying light.

Fire Bugs
The frequent and periodic fires that swept our woods during the early decades of the past century stemmed partly from the highly resinous wood of the pitch pine, the dry scrubby undergrowth, the lack of modern fire-fighting equipment, and the absence of roads over which to reach most inland blazes.

October 2007

Old School Pictures
These old pictures grabbed me so, I could not account for it. It was not just the quaintness of dress and the radically different landscape.

On the Tidal Flats
No transcript available at this time.

Seeing Nature
We remember the fates of many national parks and the foot-trampled summits of popular mountains, and we realize that our dunes and tern colonies and herring runs are even more vulnerable to affection in great numbers.

Wood Ducks in a Tree
I felt that wood ducks should not be walking around in the real world at all, but set upon some golden bough in a glass museum display case, "in a life-like attitude."

Shorebirds in the Fens
I watched him take his lunch as I took mine, and shortly he was joined by a flock of 70 or 80 small, red-backed sandpipers, known as dunlins, that whirled in from the left and took center stage.

September 2007

Going to Seed
The unpicked pole beans have turned to long, wrinkled, paper-pale pods that yield hundreds of smooth, shiny, dimpled, coffee-brown beans, more than enough for next year's planting.

Crab Charity
At first I thought I'd encountered one of the last practitioners of the Cape Codders' fabled reticence, but suddenly he swooped his net down into the murky waters and came up with a small, struggling blue crab about four inches wide.

A Labor Day Fatality
The fierceness of its face had a stunned quality to it, as if it had not been defeated but somehow tricked, or cheated of a life.

Two Oaks
Although we tout ourselves for our consummate brains, most of our vital functions - breathing, blood circulation, energy production, waste disposal - still take place, like a tree's, involuntarily and unconsciously.

August 2007

Hummingbirds
Hummingbirds are justly celebrated as physiological marvels, for their iridescent, jewel-like colors; for their ability to hover and fly backwards, even upside down, as if equipped with personal jetpacks.

Summer Doldrums
The sea lavender and the shorebirds remind me that nature's summer ends before ours does. They tell me that even when my world seems to have comes to a soggy halt, others are already in motion.

Bill Lazuras
Over against the wooded eastern shore, I see Bill Lazarus's small outboard. It's painted sky-blue, the blue of the old Cape Cod wagons, and Bill is sitting in its stern, trolling among the rocks as he has for over forty years.

July 2007

Educating Cabbage Worms
There are sprays for cabbage-worms, of course, and I confess I've occasionally resorted to a bacterial insecticide. But more often I employ a control method I learned from a friend of mine: he educates them.

Thunderstorm
I grew up in the Midwest, the land of violent thunderstorms, and I miss the air-shattering, bone-jarring cloudbursts that frequently punctuated our muggy summer days.

Ant War
One peaceful, sunny morning earlier this month, I stepped out of the front door and into the middle of a violent war.

Leaping Spider
Last night I was sitting on the couch in the living room when I noticed a small spider crawling up the sleeve of my cotton shirt.

June 2007

Lost Pond
There's a pond I know - let's call it Lost Pond- that's never crowded, not even on the hottest summer weekends.

Mimosa
A favorite tree.

An Amoral Bird
Birds inevitably call up human history and, more problematically, human morals.

The Primal Place
This week, I hope that regular ers to A Cape Cod Notebook will indulge me if I say a few words about a very gratifying recent event.

May 2007

Killdeer at the Mall
Ordinarily, a shopping center is not the place I go to see shorebirds-or any birds, for that matter.

Of Marriages and Gardens
Most gardens, like most marriages, are begun in innocence.

Under the Night Sky
One of the great pleasures of late spring and early summer is to sleep outside under the stars.

Herring Rights Article
I read with some regret this past week that the Brewster Selectmen plan to discontinue putting the "herring rights" article on future annual town meeting warrants.

April 2007

Where do we find ourselves?
One of the occupational hazards of living in a place like Cape Cod is that we don't always know where we are.

Town Landings
No transcript available at this time.

Spring Peepers
No transcript available at this time.

March 2007

The Promise of Spring
Today, at noon, I sit outside my house eating lunch on the soaked grass, in the suns and winds of March.