What lies at the end of Cockle Cove Road?

I believe the first time that I was in Cape Cod was at the ripe old age of 1 (or just about since we always spent my birthday there every year). In fact from that time I was never in school for the last week of school until I graduated high school.

When I was kid, our week at the Lantern Lane cottages on Cockle Cove Road in Chatham were as close to perfect as you could get. The days were sunny and warm. We always started our summer tans during that week, and the nights were cold enough for a fire in the cabin’s stone fireplace… good sleeping weather as my father still says. On the one-day per vacation when it would rain we’d go to the movies. It was tradition. We say that my dad has the ability to conjure up white magic – good weather – whenever he wants it and I wonder now if he didn’t conjure up that one day per trip where it rained and we stayed inside at the movie theater in Wellfleet. Maybe subliminally he wanted the excuse for one day of not fishing.

On the days we didn’t go fishing with my dad, my mom and brother (for the first 10 years or so) would walk the mile down to the little beach at the end of Cockle Cove Road. I remember that walk always felt like 10 miles – maybe because we were loaded down with beach equipment, sandwiches, etc. The walk down wasn’t too bad – somewhat downhill, but the one back always felt doubly long. It was a pretty walk alongside the salt marshes and past the one tacky souvenir shop that never had any people in it (and still doesn’t. I’m amazed every year that its still there – must be a tax write-off). It is the location of one of the best pictures that I have ever taken of my mom. The light is incredible.

All the walking was worth it when we would get down there and stake out our space on the spit of sand equally divided between the Sound on the one side and the tidal ponds on the other. I lived in those tidal ponds – high or low tide. My mom never had to wonder where I was, I was there. I was all too happy to catch minnows, snails and hermit crabs all day long for the entire week with the rest of the kids whose parents left them to their devices in this creek. It was always the same and never the same – the critters were different but the feeling of the place never changed even when I was there this week – two weeks before my 38th birthday (egad can that be true?).

When I hear about the restrictions that parents put on their kids now – not even allowing them to play in the backyard unless they are outside with them – I cringe. Yes, maybe it was a little “Lord of the Flies” down by the tidal ponds but you learned to deal with new kids, you learned so much about nature and it inspired your curiosity. Is it any wonder that a kid’s curiosity seems to be mostly computer-based now? They are not allowed to wander the way we did, so they wander the Net instead – a possibly more dangerous pool than the tidals ever were.

I have a million memories from the Cape but I remember my 16th birthday out there the most. I didn’t need a big party like so many of my friends were having. I was happy at the cabin with my parents playing 2000 rummy or penny blackjack and poker. There was no TV and the radio that I faithfully brought every year only seemed to get in one station that played all 70s easy listening. To this day when I hear these songs I am transported right back there. I even have a group of songs on one of my iPods just for this mini-escape. The Eagles, Al Stewart, Gerry Rafferty, Seals & Crofts, James Taylor, Carly Simon and Jefferson Starship every day all the time - every mellow song you ever knew was always on the Cape radio. I often wonder if kids have to listen to their parents’ music anymore given the iPods and other distractions there are. If they don’t it’s really a shame. It was a bonding point that shouldn’t be lost.

I have successfully made it to the Cape for 36 out of 38 years and over those 3+ decades its come to represent a lot of things but I think the one thing that it has always been for me is an escape. When I was a kid it gave me the chance to escape from the town I grew up in the rest of the year, when I was in college it gave me the chance to escape from college pressures about growing up and getting out, after college it was an escape from work, in my 30s after my divorce it was an escape to heal. To this day it remains that way. I get out there and any pressure I feel on the mainland slips away. I feel happy in a way that really is hard to describe. It’s coming home, It’s a womb. It’s craziness in Provincetown and laziness in front of the fire in the B&B recovering from anything that the year before had brought. Cape Cod heals me like nothing else I can find.

Sadly this year is probably one of the times when I needed it the most and had the shortest amount of time there. I felt the release when I crossed the Sagamore Bridge – opening the car windows to touch the Cape as I crossed the canal, but somewhere my mind knew it was for too short of time. I felt that dread of the ticking close almost the entire time. Usually that doesn’t kick in until the Thursday of my weeklong vacation. I needed the arms of the Cape to wrap around me and heal me again… and then the time was up and I was driving on the 6 back toward Boston with tears streaming down my face. I was truly the snail that had been ripped off the rock. I didn’t want to go yet. I wasn’t done – after all, this year had left me very tired… weary might be a better description.

But I did as much as I could, walking the wharf and the beach in P-town, Cabot’s taffy, singing at the Governor Bradford, dancing at Vixens, oysters at the Beachcomber and of course my annual pilgrimage (no pun intended) to our beach at the end of Cockle Cove Road. I touched the Cape and she touched me but it wasn’t the long hug that I needed.

So now I’m heading back to the other place I used to cry when I had to leave, California… my new home. I’ll try to bring part of the Cape with me. I have to continue what the Cape started. Maybe this year she was just a kickoff point to finding something like this on my own newly adopted coast. I wonder if there’s a Cape-like place on the northwest coast of the U.S. just like there’s one on the Northeast. Maybe I’ll look at the latitude lines for the Cape and see where it lands on this coast. There is much to discover. With my family I discovered the Cape long ago and grew to know her so well that I didn’t have to discover her anymore. Maybe I need a new horizon to discover that’ll be for the next 30 years.

One thing I will say is that the Cape did manage to do one thing… I’m writing again – as this piece can attest to. Maybe this wasn’t my happiest article – maybe too nostalgic – but I put fingers to keys and came up with a story about a place I love. 5 months ago I wondered if that could ever happen again. Forget that – a week ago I wondered if the writing spirit was gone. She’s not. She’s been hurt but not silenced… now to make her sing and laugh again.

There’s a lot I don’t know about what lies ahead, but one thing I do know is the answer to the question that I started with at the beginning of this story -- what lies at the end of Cockle Cove Road? Me. A baby, a teenager, a student, a wife, a divorcee, a woman… it’s all there in the tidal ponds anytime I need to find me.