Summer by the Sea

A midsummer morning, I search the summerhouse bookshelves for the short novel "The Country of the Pointed Firs" by Sarah Orne Jewett. She tells the story of a lone female visitor who arrives at the small coastal town called Dunnet Landing in nineteenth-century Maine, where she finds lodging with the widowed Mrs. Todd, a herbalist. One hundred and forty pages later, we never learn the lady's name. The opening paragraphs of the book capture the joy of anticipation we feel as we begin a summer vacation in a fetching spot. "There was something about the coast town ... which made it seem more attractive than other maritime villages ... Perhaps it was the simple fact of acquaintance with that neighborhood which made it so attaching, and gave such interest to the rocky shore and dark woods, and the few houses which seemed to be securely wedged and tree-nailed in among the ledges... When one really knows a village like this and its surroundings, it is like becoming acquainted with a single person. The process of falling in love at first sight is as final as it is swift in such a case, but the growth of true friendship may be a lifelong affair." We imagine the view, the perfect place to think, write, paint or simply do nothing at all... "On the brink of the hill stood a little white schoolhouse, much wind-blown and weather-beaten, which was a landmark to seagoing folk; from its door there was a most beautiful view of sea and shore. The summer vacation now prevailed, and after finding the door unfastened, and taking a long look through one of the seaward windows, and reflecting afterward for some time in a shady place among the bayberry bushes, ... I hired the schoolhouse for the rest of the vacation for fifty cents a week." Hear the shutters wobbling back and forth that mimic the wind and waves. Sit at the teacher's desk and see the sheep wander out of a fairytale. "Selfish as it may appear, the retired situation seemed to possess great advantages, and I spent days there quite undisturbed with the sea-breeze blowing through the small high windows and swaying the heavy outside shutters to and fro. I hung my hat and luncheon-basket on an entry nail as if I were a small scholar, but I sat at the teacher's desk as if I was that great authority, with all the timid empty benches in rows before me. Now and then an idle sheep came and stood for a long time looking at the door." Gather with family and friends at the annual reunion. Have a summertime feast, swim, share memories, laugh... "Twas pretty when they sang the hymn, wasn't it?" asked Mrs. Blackett at suppertime, with real enthusiasm... I saw that Mrs. Todd's broad shoulders began to shake. "There was good singers there; yes there was excellent singers," she agreed heartily, putting down her teacup, "but I chanced to drift alongside Mis' Peter Bowden o' Great Bay, an' I couldn't help thinkin' if she was as far out o'town as she was out o'tune, she wouldn't get back in a day." Spend a few hours with a good book by the sea, and embark on a summer odyssey.

The Hiding Place

 

Sitting in my favorite chair of vintage hard-rock maple that my parents bought as newlyweds, I am in the space where I feel most safe.

During the past year I have fled to the summer house countless times to reside in this little corner of the room by the window, secure in its confines.

Whether weathering storms of winter snows and spring rains or bathed in bright sunshine, I hid and read.

As the pandemic raged, my world became smaller; but my worldview became bigger.

The library shelves behind me hold dozens of my books, and I have read them all – ranging from an illustrated hardcover of J. K. Rowling’s children’s book “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” a special Christmas gift from my best friend, to a giant glossy picture book of Francesca Premoli-Droulers’ “Writers’ Houses”, a $50 splurge at Barnes & Noble that I bought decades ago with the generous Christmas bonus from a kind publisher.

I vacillated in the store whether to put the money toward the household budget or purchase this one-of-a-kind tome that was way beyond my means.

Today I think I made the right decision.

Sequestered, yet set free, I lived this past year in the pages of my books.

In my mind’s eye, I sat at a school desk in Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry holding a magic wand, or at Karen Blixen’s writing desk in Kenya gazing “Out of Africa.”

I delved into gardening books, planning rows of summer vegetable plants that would sustain my family despite supermarket shortages.

I travelled to the “The Country of the Pointed Firs” with Sarah Orne Jewett, and I became a writer who spends three months in a small coastal town in nineteenth-century Maine, or moved into the cabin that Henry David Thoreau built on the shore of “Walden” Pond.

But most of all, I pondered “The Divine Hours” by Phyllis Tickle, praying for an end to the plight of a people on a planet in pain.

'It's so good to be back'

Tightly furled leaves long to burst.

Every summer I reread “The Country of the Pointed Firs” by Sarah Orne Jewett. The first chapter, “The Return,” best explains what it means to return to a much-loved place after an absence. She writes:

“There was something about the coast town … which made it seem more attractive than other maritime villages … Perhaps it was the simple fact of acquaintance with that neighborhood which made it so attaching, and gave such interest to the rocky shore … and the few houses which seemed to be securely wedged and tree-nailed in among the ledges… These houses made the most of the seaward view … the small-paned high windows in the peaks of their steep gables were like knowing eyes that watched the harbor and the far sea-line beyond, or looked northward all along the shore … When one really knows a village like this and its surroundings, it is like becoming acquainted with a single person. The process of falling in love at first sight is as final as it is swift in such a case, but the growth of true friendship may be a lifelong affair.”

It is the beginning of the long-awaited season at Fogland; and like other summer residents, my pulse quickens as I come home again. The shimmering Sakonnet, the well-kept cottages, and the sleeping summer house – all welcome us. Over and over again, we say to each other, “It’s so good to be back.”

Yet, there is much work to do. The summer house has been in a state of hibernation for nearly six months, and it is time for it to be reawakened.

We call in the plumber who climbs inside the well house and installs a new pump, and like the rhythmic beating of a heart circulating blood through veins, it sends the water coursing through the pipes. One frigid year the pipes burst, and the rooms were flooded. Consequently, we hold our breath until we learn that the old piping has survived another year.

Throughout the winter, we worried about the roof. We remembered what had happened some years ago when the ceiling had fallen into the living room, and we had to hire a carpenter to fix the roof, as well as put up a new ceiling. But this year, outside of some cobwebs, the summer house is intact.

Inside the sticking front door, it feels cold and lifeless. We pull up the shades and open the windows, and let the clean sea breeze stir the dead air. Sunlight bounces off the walls and illuminates the dust. We turn on the hot water and plug in the fridge.

My mother puts fresh linens on the beds, while my father carries in a trunk-full of food.

Outside, my husband mows the knee-high lawn, which always grows fast in this fertile, coastal soil.

Before long the summer house will be filled with shrieks of laughter.

“It’s so good to be back.”

Season of sunshine comes to its lovely end

It is the end of October, and my family and I are forced to face the inevitable: It is time to close up the summer house for another season.

Our sweatshirts are no longer ample protection from the cold winds, and we linger a few minutes at the beach before returning to the warmth of the house.

On Sunday afternoons we remain inside watching the Patriots play, rather than sunning ourselves in the back yard.

Then the day comes when my husband and his friend winterize the house, draining the water from the pipes to prevent freezing.

The season of sunny summer days and simple pleasures officially ends when my parents lock the door behind them.

As New Englanders, we look forward to the changing seasons in comfy woolen sweaters and welcome the beauty of the colorful fall foliage. But with each passing year, I find it more difficult to leave the summer house behind. I yearn to prolong the season because I know that things will never be the same again.

Eight months’ later when I return to the summer house, the population and landscape will be altered.

Some of our former neighbors will never return again, the for-sale signs placed prominently in the yards of empty houses. Others have already sold their homes, and real estate developers raze the old cottages and construct expensive new homes on the lots or rent the properties to a succession of weekly tenants.

I worry about my aging parents and pray that they’ll have many more years of good health and happy times at the summer house. They tire more easily these days, and the upkeep on the house proves more difficult with each passing season.

And I wonder if this will be the last season for all of us.

Sixty-seven years ago, many of the cottages on this peninsula were destroyed by hurricane winds and rising waters. Will this be the year that Mother Nature unleashes her fury again on our little stretch of coastline?

Sarah Orne Jewett best describes the feelings of separation from a seaside home as the end of the season approaches.

In “The Country of the Pointed Firs” she writes:

“At last it was the time of late summer, when the house was cool and damp in the morning … There was no autumnal mist on the coast, nor an August fog; instead of these, the sea, the sky, all the long shore line and inland hills, with every bush of bay and every fir-top, gained a deeper color and a sharper clearness. There was something shining in the air, and a kind of luster on the water. The sunshine of a northern summer was coming to its lovely end. The days were few then … and I let each of them slip away unwillingly as a miser spends his coins. At last I had to say goodbye to all my … friends, and my homelike place in the little house, and return to the world in which I feared to find myself a foreigner. There may be restrictions to such a summer’s happiness, but the ease that belongs to simplicity is charming enough to make up for whatever a simple life may lack. When I went in again, the little house had suddenly grown lonely, and my room looked empty as it had the day I came. I and all my belongings had died out of it … So we die before our own eyes; so we see some chapters of our lives come to their natural end.”

With gratefulness I bid farewell to another season. Every weekend throughout the long winter ahead, my husband and I will be drive-by visitors, checking on the summer house.

Then we’ll park our truck at the state beach, shut off the engine, and take in the beauty of our home’s winter face. With hot cups of coffee and tea cradled in our hands, we will plan.

Fogland is the stuff of dreams.

  

Season's turning...

As of yet, the violet morning glories still cling to the front porch lattice and to summer, although we have come officially to the end of the season.

The weather has been unseasonably warm at the summer house for late October, but we know as native New Englanders that a sudden frost and freezing temperatures are imminent.

During the past few weeks we have winterized the summer house.

First we emptied the kitchen and laundry room cabinets, filling the trunk with enough groceries to suspend trips to the supermarket for a while.

Then I vacuumed all the rooms, sucking out a pail of sand hidden within carpet fibers.

Next I lifted the window screens and dropped in all the storm windows.

Finally, we emptied the refrigerator – a  freezer-full of hamburgers, hot dogs, sausages, steaks, and tubs of ice cream, as well as half-filled bottles of mustard, relish, ketchup, salad dressings, barbecue sauce, mayonnaise and pickles.

Looking around, the place was clean and neat and sad.

What is a summer house without friends and family sprawled on the sofa, sleeping dogs curled at your feet, the sounds of football and baseball games blaring on the TV, the smells of clamboils bubbling on the stove and smoky barbecues wafting through the windows?

All that will remain is for my husband and his friend to drain the pipes. Unable to emit heat or light, the summer house will sit in cold and darkness, waiting in silence for our return next spring.

One of my favorite short stories is “The Country of the Pointed Firs” by Sarah Orne Jewett, who tells the tale of a lone woman visitor to a small coastal town in nineteenth-century Maine, where she bonds with the inhabitants and leaves regrettably at the end of the season.

Every year I feel her pain and sense of loss as we lock the door behind us.

“When I went in again, the little house had suddenly grown lonely, and my room looked empty as it had the day I came,” wrote Jewett. “I and all my belongings had died out of it … So we die before our own eyes; so we see some chapters of our lives come to their natural end.

“As I came away on the little coastwise steamer, there was an old sea running which made the surf leap high on all the rocky shores… Presently the wind began to blow, and we struck out… and when I looked back again, the islands and the headland had run together… and all its coasts were lost to sight.”

Tiverton by sea: A photo essay

Every summer I reread "The Country of the Pointed Firs" by Sarah Orne Jewett. The first chapter, "The Return," best explains what it means to return to a much-loved place like our summer home at Fogland. She writes:

"There was something about the coast town ... which made it seem more attractive than other maritime villages ... Perhaps it was the simple fact of acquaintance with that neighborhood which made it so attaching, and gave such interest to the rocky shore ... and the few houses which seemed to be securely wedged and tree-nailed in among the ledges... These houses made the most of the seaward view ... the small-paned high windows in the peaks of their steep gables were like knowing eyes that watched the harbor and the far sea-line beyond, or looked northward all along the shore ... When one really knows a village like this and its surroundings, it is like becoming acquainted with a single person. The process of falling in love at first sight is as final as it is swift in such a case, but the growth of true friendship may be a lifelong affair."

A woman reels in a fish as we approach Nanaquaket Bridge.

Navigating the currents near Old Stone Bridge, we follow the boat "Relentless."

The view seaside of the Fogland State Beach ramp.

Passing alongside a moored fishing boat near Nanaquaket.

Chugging past Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, I remember the day I interviewed a former pastor of the congregation. As he stood at the lectern, he began reciting "The Lord's Prayer," and I joined in: "Our Father who art in Heaven hallowed be Thy name... We were two worshippers, a Protestant and a Catholic, praising God with one strong voice.

A striking sailboat with red sails skims the Sakonnet.

After a three-hour tour, we return to the slip at Standish Boatyard.

The end of the season

Colorful leaves create a natural fence at the summer house.

It is the middle of November, and we are forced to face the inevitable. The delightful interlude of sunny summer days and simple pleasures is coming to an end. It is time to close up the summer house for another season.

Our sweatshirts are no longer ample protection from the cold winds, and we linger a few minutes at the beach before returning to the warmth of the house.

This week my husband and his friend will winterize the place, draining the water from the pipes to prevent freezing.

The little house will be shuttered, bracing itself for icy winds and a long season of silence. Bereft of family and unable to generate heat or light, it will hibernate and patiently await our return.

With each passing year, I find it more difficult to leave the summer house behind.

Sarah Orne Jewett best describes the feelings of separation from a seaside home in “The Country of the Pointed Firs.”

“The sunshine of a northern summer was coming to its lovely end. The days were few then … and I let each of them slip away unwillingly as a miser spends his coins. At last I had to say goodbye to all my … friends, and my homelike place in the little house, and return to the world in which I feared to find myself a foreigner… When I went in again, the little house had suddenly grown lonely, and my room looked empty as it had the day I came. I and all my belongings had died out of it … so we die before our own eyes; so we see some chapters of our lives come to their natural end.”

With gratefulness I bid farewell to another season. Every weekend throughout the long winter ahead, my husband and I will be drive-by visitors, checking on the summer house.

Then we’ll park our truck at the beach, shut off the engine, and admire the Creator's handiwork. 

“The immensity of nature … gives us a new perspective on life, washes away or minimizes our worries,” writes Ferenc Mate, the author of “A Real Life – Rediscovering the Roots of Our Happiness.” “How can we feel sad with all the beauty there is to see? And how can we feel poor when all this beauty belongs to us?”

An October ride

Sometimes I wonder what lures me from bed on a Saturday morning, especially on a day like this.

Light rain splatters against the windows and a heavy mist envelops the house; yet in the darkness I happily slip into my jeans and sneakers, instead of suit and heels.

No matter the weather, Saturday offers an escape.

Outside, I hear the idling car, where my husband awaits. I grab my raincoat and camera, and I’m off.

Today we head from Massachusetts to the Tiverton summer house by a different route, taking the back roads through Westport and Little Compton.

The fall colors are muted in the rain, splotches of yellows and oranges stand out amidst a predominance of greenery.

No one is about as we slowly make our way along the winding, hilly roads. I admire the well-kept houses. Pumpkins and chrysanthemums sit on front steps, and fallen leaves carpet yards.

Today’s trek reminds me of the short story “An October Ride” written more than a hundred years ago by New England author Sarah Orne Jewett.

Remembering these lines, I smile as I compare her ride to ours:

“After I was once on the high road, it was not long before I found myself in another part of the town altogether,” she wrote. “It is great fun to ride about the country; one rouses a great deal of interest; there seems to be something exciting in the sight of a girl on horseback, and people who pass you in wagons turn to look after you, though they never would take the trouble if you were only walking.”

Our sleek red sports car turns onto Pond Bridge Road, and we drive into a blanket of heavy fog.

Before us are bright orange shapes hovering in the mist. Thousands of pumpkins await harvest.

Parking on the side of the road, I open the window; and like a phantom, the wet, dense air fills the space.

I can hear the Sakonnet, the loud crash of waves in the distance. Although I cannot see them, I know the rows of pumpkins point the way.   

“I wonder what I am; there is a strange self-consciousness, but I am only a part of one great existence which is called nature,” wrote Jewett. “The life in me is a bit of all life, and where I am happiest is where I find that which is next of kin to me, in friends, or trees, or hills, or seas.”

Whether on horseback or in a Corvette, it’s always worth the trip.

A tale of two seaside towns

Most of life’s lessons I learned by the sea.

Living along the Sakonnet River, an inlet that stretches to the Atlantic, I measure my days by its currents.

Every summer I reread “The Country of the Pointed Firs” by Sarah Orne Jewett, a story about an unnamed sojourner who relates a series of episodes taking place in a seaside town.

It speaks to me because Dunnet Landing resembles my home port of Tiverton and fires my imagination urging me to tell our tale.

“After a first brief visit made two or three summers before …, a lover of Dunnet Landing returned to find the unchanged shores of the pointed firs, the same quaintness of the village with its elaborate conventionalities; all that mixture of remoteness, and childish certainty of being the center of civilization of which her affectionate dreams had told,” Jewett wrote.

Returning to the summer house each season, I rejoice in coming home to our sanctuary by the sea. Surrounded by the Sakonnet on three sides, the tiny peninsula is populated with cottages and carefully tended gardens brimming with colorful flowers. Beach roses adorn the shoreline, and the water beyond beckons, encouraging us to walk along its contours or sit a spell on a boulder strategically placed for this purpose.

“For various reasons, the seclusion and uninterrupted days which had been looked forward to prove to be otherwise in this delightful corner of the world,” Jewett wrote.

Seeking solitude I come to the summer place, but its beauty shouts at me; and I cannot keep this to myself, bottling up these experiences rather than pouring them out: the intense blue of the sky and puffy white clouds that float by, the heady fragrance of the whispering wind, the music the breakers make as they caress the shore.

Jewett creates the perfect space in this beautifully crafted novel:

“On the brink of the hill stood a little white schoolhouse, much wind-blown and weather-beaten, which was a landmark to seagoing folk; from its door there was a most beautiful view of sea and shore … and I spent many days there quite undisturbed, with the sea-breeze blowing through the small, high windows and swaying the heavy outside shutters to and fro.”

Wandering around this little corner of the world for decades, my eyes rest on sights that I first viewed through child’s eyes, yet seen so differently through the lens of time. This sojourner welcomes each day as a gift and with thanksgiving perceives the natural world as the sublime artistry of the Creator.

“It had been growing gray and cloudy … and a shadow had fallen on the darkening shore. Suddenly, as we looked, a gleam of golden sunshine struck the outer islands, and one of them shone out clear in the light, and revealed itself in a compelling way to our eyes,” wrote Jewett. … It gave a sudden sense of space, for nothing stopped the eye or hedged one in, – that sense of liberty in space and time which great prospects always give.”