The other day I drove down to the Nauset Light Beach parking lot in North Eastham for the first time since Labor Day. Somehow, in its off-season emptiness, I was struck even more than usual at how extensive and labyrinthine a maze the entrance to this beach has become over time.
No longer can we simply drive directly to the end of our land and step onto the beach. Instead, as though entering some bizarre combination of exclusive residential development and a shopping center parking lot, we must now first pass through a guard house (empty this time of year), then follow white painted arrows through a maze of roads to find a slot in one of the hundreds of parking spaces, whose white lines jut out diagonally like codfish bones from the spines of ten-foot-wide pressure-treated plank boardwalks. The whole area has an abstract, unnerving feeling to it, like negotiating the overpasses on the Southeast Expressway, navigating entrances and exits, following signs and semiotics that seem to have little relationship to our actual destination, before we can finally stand face-to-face with the sea.
On the other hand, I suppose, this could be seen as adding to the value of the experience. That is, the abstract and maze-like character of the parking lot could be seen as a trial or barrier one must pass or cross, so that when one finally does gain the beach, there is a greater sense of reward. Or maybe not.
In any case, I did gain the beach and headed north. The tide was a little past high and the clean beach was laced in delicate overlapping loops of crushed reddish seaweed. The sea itself was as easy as it ever gets: gentle, low waves gnashing and noshing at the lower beach, soft seethes of foam, the surface of the ocean calm enough for a canoe, a blue silky molten sheen, gently heaving like a large water bed in a seaside house. The whole scene seemed pressed gently down by the weight of the soft, heavy, saturated hazy air of a lazy autumn’s afternoon. I walked on, not seeing much, not expecting much, just glad to be out here walking again among the big things.
About twenty yards offshore I noticed the large, mottled head of a gray seal staring straight at me with its large, dark, hollow eyes, its face not doglike at all, but rather mask-like, as though its hooded eyes contained some strange inner intelligence. It seemed alone, and let me look back at it for a half minute or so before simply sinking out of sight. I took the opportunity to stop and rest, and watched for it for several minutes before starting on again. Only then did I look back and see it in the water behind me, like a dog in the weeds, steadily following my progress, until it lost interest and sank again.
Then I noticed a loon offshore. It, too, was alone, stately, and no less dignified in its reduced, post-breeding plumage. It sailed along gracefully on the smooth surface of the swells for many yards and then dove with a little fillip, not even ruffling the water surface. All wild things are so graceful in their chosen medium. It had such smooth dignity, such perfect fittingness. Grace and fittingness were, in fact, the qualities of the day here on this beach, and I felt that their appeal was somehow enhanced by the abstract maze of the parking lot that I had had to negotiate to get here.
