The other week, we were passing exit 11 on the mid-cape highway. Twenty years have gone by, and I still crane my neck towards the outbound lane, looking for my old middle school. I search for the familiar break in the trees, a blur of branches and sky as the car speeds along.
It’ll be a while before I learn the new numbers on the mid cape exit signs, if I manage to learn them at all.
And then we are at the rotary, and then we are in Eastham, passing Collins Cove. And then, as it always does, the distance from here to the very end of the Cape seems to take nearly no time at all. There is a rhythm to this road, one I know by heart.
We walk through Provincetown, past where there used to be a video store, when there was a time when people rented movies. We make smalltalk with people we used to know. They are painting both houses and landscapes, or selling tickets for sunset cruises, or getting their kids ready for school in the fall.
Flags hang over the streets, fluttering like the feathers of tropical birds. There are people we thought would live forever, and nearly all of them have died in the last two years. Their houses still stand, facing the harbor, white clapboard glowing softly in the early August light.
We take the shuttle boat all the way to Long Point. Couples and families hauling wagons full of beach gear jostle together when we encounter the wake of a passing speed boat. The shorebirds have a claim on this place, the bureaucratic Bird Use Only signs push us to the very edge of the beach. Seals swim through the shallows, their slick bodies undulating through the waves.
The swimming is absolutely perfect here, the water is clear as cut glass, tinted green. I’m compelled to open my eyes underwater, and I swear it doesn’t sting. I float on my back and hear hundreds of thousands of grains of sand tinkling against one another, like champagne flutes toasting. It feels like a pilgrimage, and I guess it is, to immerse myself in this cooler water.
From this vantage point, the Outer Cape spirals out towards Wellfleet. There are the cottages on Beach Point, packed tight together like rows of teeth. The sun glints off their white shingles and it is nearly too bright to look at. You can’t see the grains of sand as they slip away out here.
We sing the same songs as we did the last time we made it out here, drift off into the same summer-heavy dreams. I walk towards the ruins of...what, exactly? Some winters ago, there was a swingset made of driftwood, bleached by the salt and sun. She swears it was just around this bend.
I examine every interesting rock along the way. I know I’ll find them in the pockets of my clothes later and wonder just what I was thinking when I picked up these half dozen stones. What made me think they were more worthy than the others left scattered along the shore?
As the sun slips down low, we make the journey in reverse. Clam shacks, soft serve ice cream stores, and beach plum jelly stands all drift into the rearview mirror. And didn’t that used to be where the old theatre was?
Maybe that’s just part of getting older. Searching the empty spaces in the treeline, where some place only you remember used to be.
