Late Sunday afternoon — it isn’t all that late, but now that it’s dark at 4:30, late is all relative. Landmarks change in the winter light. The boarded-up Surfside snackbar where teenagers spent the summer scooping ice cream haunts the empty parking lot. The water fountains have been turned off, but the DPW has forgotten about the outdoor shower. A cyclist I recognize, but whose name I don’t remember, contorts his body to drink from the shower’s spray. Miraculously, he accomplishes this without getting wet.
“Hard to believe this is all for us islanders,” he says, indicating the path down towards the beach, wispy clouds unraveling as they arc across the sky. He leaves his bike — unlocked — and darts down towards the shore. The ocean is a deep blue that’s almost purple, with little white-capped waves foaming in the shallows.
Who is us, exactly? I have not shaken off the identity bestowed upon me when I was three years old — washashore. There has been a lot of talk about who gets to live here and who gets to vote here. Who is really a resident, and who is a summer person? To paraphrase a line from Outer Cape writer Heidi Jon Schmidt — there are those who are here because they can afford to be, the rest are here because they cannot afford to leave.
I see more locals at the beach these days than I do in the summertime. The stretch of beach from Surfside to Nonantum is the main drag on weekend afternoons, when the appearance of the sun, however fleeting, is cause for celebration. Long shadows intersect with tire tracks, both stretching east along the sand. At first, I don’t always recognize people walking along the beach, their bodies obscured by winter coats and hats. There is an inverse relationship each season between the size of the beach and the amount of clothing people have on.
I run into a young couple who is moving a house, that would otherwise be demolished, across the island in December. The cottage will have to be cut in two, trucked along narrow roads, and stitched back together once it reaches its final destination. This procedure requires the precision of a surgeon: re-connecting pipes, untangling electrical wiring, patching walls.
It is getting harder for a lot of people I know to imagine themselves here long term. Downtown at the Hub bulletin board, somebody has posted a letter to the editor about the proposed real estate transfer fee to fund affordable housing. Another added their handwritten notes and underlines to the letter. I feel like I am eavesdropping on a silent conversation.
The President of the United States will be here this week for Thanksgiving. Nearby, the town’s tree warden conducts a crew putting up Christmas trees. Now the whole town smells of evergreen.
Back at the beach, the landscape is fluid, shifting from season to season. I imagine my friend’s new-old house, cut in half and surfing along Surfside Road, a bar of Ivory soap still left in the outdoor shower. Eider ducks and other visiting birds bob up and down in the surf break. Turns out old cottages on Nantucket are migratory creatures, too.
