The Cape is undeniably better during the winter - many friends, colleagues, and patients have already said as much during our short time in Massachusetts. Sure, there’s something to be said for America’s classic summer vacation: the colorful umbrellas and towels spread over the beach, the slow sunsets and long nights sipping ice-cold lemonade, the ice cream stands, the seedy motels, the fish fry joints. But return to the Outer Cape in the wintertime, and one is greeted by a totally different landscape: elemental, stark, and beautiful. Icy winds howling across the endless dunes and their intervening valleys. Storm clouds blowing in from the Atlantic across Cape Cod Bay. Lines of breakers pounding on the shifting sands. The absence of summer’s two great pests - biting insects and seasonal traffic - don’t hurt, either.
Jane and I drive out from Boston on a Saturday morning for a brief overnight stay on the winter Cape. Fully bundled up with only our eyes exposed to the biting chill, we leave our car by the highway, hiking up into the massive dune system of the Provincelands. Steep as the Great Dune is, the undulating sand, rendered firm by recent snow and ice, is easy to cross. We crest the top of first ridge and turn back for photos toward the bay; the Pilgrim Monument in Provincetown is visible to the south, a sentinel on the horizon. To the north, we catch our first sight of the Atlantic Ocean, a distant, blue-grey haze beyond the series of peaks, some of which are topped by little shacks and wooden fenceposts. We drop down into a trough of wind-blasted sand, descending toward a valley filled with pitch pine, beachgrass, and other dune vegetation. The dwarven trees, clinging to each other amidst ripples of sand and snow, make for quite an otherworldly environment. We walk through this little forest, emerging at the valley’s other end, atop the last rise before the foreshore. The waves are roaring toward us here, driven forward by an offshore storm. Jane walks along the bluffs while I photograph her with the crashing ocean.
After a long return walk to the car, we drive back south and grab a delicious takeout lunch at Mac’s Seafood Market & Kitchen in Eastham (crabcake sandwich and fries for me; a cod sandwich and a bowl of chowder for Jane). Now past mid-day, we retrace our route along the Cape Highway and proceed to Grays Beach in Yarmouth, where the boardwalk over the marsh (a buggy, crowded mess in the summer), is all ours for the afternoon. It is a stunningly cold day; gloves and coats on, we creep to the end of the rime-covered walkway and photograph the ice jam flowing through the nearby tidal inlet. After this, it’s time for dinner and an early, relaxing motel night, with the heater at full blast and the TV on - a well-worn and familiar pattern for Jane’s and my weekend getaways.
