The strangeness of nature

 

"The turning of the year brings a change in the valley, as the first leaves begin to turn to gold and scarlet," wrote Gladys Taber from her seventeenth-century New England farmhouse and its lovely surroundings. "It is no longer the green, green world of summer. Suddenly one morning I look out and see the swamp maple ablaze. I feel the strangeness of nature all over again."

I awake early and drag my feet.

Today is the day that we officially close the summer house.

We drive along coastal roads under cobalt blue skies and overarching tunnels of leaves, vibrant in reds, yellows, greens and, unfortunately, crinkled browns.

I trace the coastline, attempting to memorize the picture before me of whirring white foam slamming the rocky shore.

When we arrive at the summer house, I turn on the switch for the water and climb the well-worn painted stairs. Mom removes the screen from the front door, and I head to the bedroom to lift and carry the heavy glass window.

Struggling to align the glass to fit in the slots, we finally give up and save that chore for my husband another day.

Next, we attempt to defrost the old refrigerator, but it seems to be frozen in place. We tug the freezer door to no avail, and I think I hear it chuckle. 

Mom starts filling pans with water to boil and place inside the fridge. A half hour later with both of us pulling the handle as hard as we can, it opens. 

We try to scrape off the ice in the freezer, but it is an unmovable mass.

No worries, we can fill more pans with boiling water. Mom turns on the faucet, and nothing drips from the tap.

After a harried call to my husband, who makes a harried call to the plumber, we give up.

I remove soft drinks and half-empty condiments from  the fridge, as well as the leftover groceries still in the cabinets; and I carry them all to the car. 

Exhausted, I lament the day's turn of events. 

We bounce down the rutted, bumpy road, and I hear the sea gulls laughing. 

Sunshine is delicious

“Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather,” wrote English writer and philosopher John Ruskin.

On this unseasonably cold day, it is a different kind of good weather at the summer house, and I wonder where the warmth went.

All summer the sun was a torch, singeing these three tiny streets by the sea in our little corner of New England. Yet what seems like a blink of an eye, October brought her pounding rains and plummeting temperatures, drawing us inside while lamenting season’s end.

But Ruskin is right. Fogland beckons no matter the weather; and with this kind of thinking, it is always a fun day at the beach.

Gathering inside the summer house offers new perspective. After cranking up the thermostat, I sit by the window, taking in the view from the inside out.

Quintessentially New England, the foliage is tinted in shades of reds, yellows, browns and greens, as the leaves levitate in the brisk breeze.

Despite the windows being closed, one can still hear the soughing of the sea, which is the rhythm of life in these parts.

In a space like this, quiet permeates everything; and the senses discern the tinniest sounds from a gull’s distant cry to the buzz of a bee.

The violet morning glories cling perilously to the porch, wrapping around the railings, holding on for dear life.

I hear the sound of a hammer reverberating, as a workman dangles from staging on the peak of a three-story house, replacing shingles from a recent storm.

But most of my neighbors are tucked inside. I see no cars passing by, although I spot a woman walking her little white dog as she braves the constant wind.

Then a violent sound eclipses the solitude. My husband starts the lawn mower, which blocks out everything. The noise is deafening, but the intrusion is necessary. After the rains this past week, the lawn mushroomed.

Getting up, I grab the afghan my mother made from the back of the couch and wrap myself in its comforting warmth.

Reaching up, I slide a book off the shelf.

Another fun day at the beach…

Coming home to the summerhouse

The sunny Saturday morning of Memorial Day weekend, we flung open the door of the summerhouse, the simple act culminating six months of dreaming and planning for the new season.

Yet, almost every Saturday morning since we had winterized and closed the house last October, my husband and I had returned to the place.

After a quick stop at Black Goose Café to pick up breakfast – usually a cranberry-orange or blueberry muffin or perhaps a slice of artichoke quiche, as well as cups of tea and black coffee – we drove to the beach.

Parked by a picnic table, our Honda CRV was pelted by sand, wind, snow or rain while we surveyed the changing seascapes, one bite at a time.

Then we drove to the summerhouse, and unless snowdrifts barred our passage, we pulled into the backyard and shut off the engine.

My husband braved the elements, walking the property and checking on his landlocked boat, while I sat in the silence and warmth of the vehicle, marveling at the beauty of God’s creations.

It's good to be home again...

'Summer's lease hath all too short a date'

Sanderlings congregate at the water's edge.

There is a change in the air at the summer house. The sky is an intense blue, the sun warm on my shoulders, and the cool breeze oh so pleasant; but they signal the approach to the end of the season and prelude to winter.

“Summer’s lease hath all too short a date,” wrote William Shakespeare in Sonnet 18. My sentiments exactly.

Gladys Taber chronicled the passing of the season from the perch of her pre-Colonial farmhouse in rural Connecticut.

“I know fall is here, although the world is still green with summer,” she said. “And I feel an urgency to gather in all the loveliness of the past blazing days and star-cool nights and keep them forever.”

We grill hamburgers and eat them inside at the dining room table. They taste even better, if possible, than the ones we’ve enjoyed all season long because we know these simple feasts are numbered. My father is cold, and he shuts all the windows.

After lunch, my mother and I sit in the sun dappled by the old tree in the backyard. We chat and begin reading magazines, but before long we have goose bumps on our arms and return to the warmth of the house.

A short time later, however, we grow restless spending such a lovely day inside. We slip into our sweatshirts and head to the beach, but it no longer resembles the summer seashore. There is a new stone pathway that leads down to the water. Where there was sand, there is now a sea of stones stretching across the entire beach.

We sit on a flat-topped boulder and watch sanderlings in parties of ten to twelve run ahead of oncoming waves. These small, eight-inch members of the sandpiper family have a white head and underbelly and gray upper parts. Their bill is short, their back heavily spotted and the bend of their wing is black. They cluster together and move in tandem.

As I approach, I startle them; and they take to the air in unison landing farther down the beach. Then once again, on spindly legs they race in nature’s dance dodging the waves.

Sandpipers are such interesting creatures. Their mysterious comings and goings seem to me “much ado about nothing”, as they hop, lunge and fly about with nervous energy.

Yet I think that sometimes we long for the security of a sandpiper’s life, congregating together in groups, following the leader, choosing a seemingly happy, carefree existence.

“Most of us spend a lot of time seeking happiness and always feel that we shall achieve it magically,” wrote Taber. “If we are fortunate, we realize at some point in our search that we are taking the wrong path. Happiness is, in the end, an attitude of mind. It involves acceptance of reality and a warm appreciation of such simple things as a friend looking happy when we meet unexpectedly or the way the first star comes out at twilight.”

The day is waning, and the cool sea breeze biting. Yet I linger. I am content to watch the sanderlings in their habitat, weaving their magical dance.

Their stay is short. By October, they will be gone. It is rare to see them here in winter.

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.

  

Summer slides into autumn

Dragging my feet, I find myself in the last weekend of summer. In all my memories of summer days spent at the summer house, I cannot recall a season of such perfect weather. It is the stuff of quintessential New England: cool sunny mornings, clear cloudless days with gentle breezes, brilliant rosy sunsets and comfortable evenings.

“Summer slides so gently into autumn … that it is easy to believe there will be no end,” said New England author Gladys Taber. “Day dreams toward twilight, skies are sapphire, the tide ebbs quietly. I begin to think time itself is arrested and the green leaves will stay forever on the trees. Gardens glow with color, with late roses and with carpets of zinnias and asters.”

Even though I am in denial, I detect the winds of change. A tinge of orange colors the maple leaves in the front yard. When I walk to the beach, I bring a sweatshirt. I can count the few fuchsia beach roses that still cling to the bushes.

Yet, despite my reluctance to move on, I admit that September offers a beautiful backdrop to my days. Now there is time to pause and truly admire the Creator’s handiwork.

This is my husband’s favorite fishing season. There is a plentiful supply of scup waiting to bite on clam necks, sandworms and squid; and bluefish race up and down the coast, chasing schools of prey. No bait required – casting or trolling with a lure will hook this silvery fish that can range up to 40 inches in length and weigh up to 20 pounds.

Dashing wildly within the schools of prey, the bluefish bite, cripple and kill the small fish that do not get eaten. Charting the course from above, flocks of seagulls follow the trail and splurge on leftovers.

From my perch on a boulder, I watch the fishermen in their powerboats crank up their engines in hot pursuit of the blues; while on shore, the anglers run up and down the beach following the path of screeching gulls and jumping fish.

Then by an unseen cue, the wind picks up; and I wrap my arms about me, lingering a little longer.

“Nature, however, sets her own time schedule,” said Taber. “She decides when the first white frost will come and when the geese go over and when the leaves will begin to drift down and when the hibernating small animals will feel the urge to snug down in their burrows.”

With my hair whipping wildly in the wind, I slowly amble back to the summer house for a cup of tea.