A Cape Cod Notebook

Not every public way is marked out here. I don’t worry about that too much. If you aren’t supposed to be someplace, there will most certainly be a sign warning you to keep off.

I have always taken a certain pleasure in the knowledge that a flock of finches (whose name I share with them) is traditionally known as a “charm.” “A charm of finches.”

I was walking along Commercial Street with a friend one evening in post-holiday Provincetown, when she suddenly remarked, “God, how empty this place is!”

On a raw cold gray day in late December, up on Pilgrim Heights in North Truro, a lone bird sits on a telephone wire. It is a Mourning Dove, slightly swaying in the wind.

This time of year, the wind starts unraveling people. Especially if you are trying to leave the island for any reason, suddenly your entire life revolves around windspeeds. We are all amature amenologists out here.

“Where are the snows of yesteryear?” is the often-quoted opening line of a poem by the 15th century French poet Francois Villon.

I’ve always disliked the expression “bucket list,’ the phrase popularly used to describe those things one would like to do before one, well, “kicks the bucket.”

I’m feeling guilty about the daddy longlegs in my shower.She was living peacefully in the upper southwest corner but started tip-toeing down the tile as I stepped in and turned on the spray. I flicked a few drops of water her way so she would stay in her penthouse, but apparently I created a wave that was the insect equivalent of a tsunami.

Our house was built largely from recycled materials. It was built in the late 1980s by Phillipe Villard, a multi-talented artist who was born in France and came to this country in his thirties.