Low tide on Sears Point. © 2016 Andrew G. Buckley

It wasn’t the brilliance that captured our attention. It was what was in the sky.

Every morning, since April, I have been taking a moment to drive down to the overlook at Lighthouse Beach and check in. It used to be a habit of mine, years ago, to once a weekend drive to various town landings around town and see how things were going.

Not there for more than a minute often. Just an exercise to touch base, like a child might with cherished toys, to reassure that these hidden gems were still there. Forest Beach, Harding’s, Sears Point, Old Mill Boatyard, Bridge Street, the Dike, Water Street, Claflin Landing, the Cow Yard, Cotchpinicut and Ministers Point, Strong Island Road, and Jackknife.

Ideally with a hot chocolate. Sunny days were great, being able to see the surf far off, or a stray boat on the horizon in the off season. But it was the days when the spitting rain, driven by a northeast wind that buffeted my little land craft, that turned this from a simple regular exercise into a necessity. Tidal and storm erosion could change things overnight. That’s what living here on the elbow teaches you. Expect loss.

The cemeteries here offer centuries of heartbreaking testimony. Tombstones carved with the successive death of children before their parents’ own. Husbands and wives suddenly lost at sea or taken by illness. Some graves have no bodies.

By early April I had made a habit of parking at the overlook on and off, to take a few photos, eat a muffin and drink my coffee, and generally collect my thoughts. Any one of those is a good enough reason to make that a regular stop. There are few places around here so expansive in view and similarly accessible. No wonder that so many TV trucks from far and wide use it as a backdrop for reporters talking about hurricanes and shark attacks.

I had come here early in April, late on a Saturday morning, pulling into a spot near the northernmost pay binoculars. It was one of those early spring days that promise more of June than January. The ocean and beach before me, the lighthouse to my right, and the Mack Memorial to the drowned sailors and life savers of the Wadena Disaster behind me, it was easy to savor the blue of it all.

While I snapped a photo to share this scene with friends far and wide, a new icon came up on my Facebook. It said “LIVE.” Which I took to mean like a live broadcast, although it could have meant live, as in I live under a bridge but it is OK because at least I have a roof and decent WiFi.

Thus began, with increasing frequency, my daily series Cape Cod Coffee Break. Typically in the morning, typically at the overlook (at the same parking spot), typically only a couple of minutes and typically with a inexplicably poor 4G signal from Verizon. A little report on the current weather conditions, followed by shout outs to friends with birthdays and perhaps a mention of something interesting happening. Every once in a while, a friend might show up, or more recently people who have been watching. What’s particularly nice is making new friends from far away who recognize the view. But I’ve been thinking about something more.

By casually documenting the conditions in this one spot every day, I’m creating a log. Weather and shore conditions. The sea and sky and beach. So while I am mentioning the birthday of NPR’s Jack Speer or walking over to the plaque relating the diverted voyage of the Mayflower to the mouth of the Hudson, there’s a realtime dataset of the conditions being permanently stored for this location.

Presence of seals across the channel. The narrowing of the channel entrance. The number of tour buses. And the clouds. We especially notice the clouds. This summer, with a prolonged and devastating drought, I reported that there was no warning flag for mariners flown at the Coast Guard Station. Day after day. Likewise, bright, clear days of endless horizon and blue skies. The grass turned to thatch. It was clear but became uninteresting.

Finally last month the clouds returned, with the drama of the repressed. Puffy cumulus racing north to south. Total cover of heavy mist. Last evening’s crescendo of stratus, reflecting the sunset and later surrounding the Hunter’s Moon as it rose from the sea. It was that last that gave me pause to consider.

Having a few very busy mornings, I had to delay my broadcasts until the late afternoon. Seeing the beach from this other perspective, with the sun behind the lighthouse, the beach reflecting the light, I chose to go to Harding’s Beach at dusk. We are now in the days of the 6 p.m. sunset. Much like early April, this time around an equinox seems to hold the best clouds.

Their beauty is totally in reflection, and often to obscure the light. Or to diffuse that energy. Much like the moon, they hold none of their own. We notice most especially when there is nothing else. The solitary cloud, sitting seemingly poignant in its placement, seemingly immobile in the blue or the dark on a random patch on our ceiling. They fascinate, looking down from a plane, or up from our place on the ocean or land. Ephemeral, they look eternal. Insubstantial, they look solid.

When I am able to take a photo, their paintings on the sky make it more interesting. A distraction from seeing further.

As I head to my next coffee break, I see another clear blue day outside. No clouds. No rain to come, for now, but no hiding the true warmth of the sun on the Cape Cod waters and sand. This too shall change, and we will check again tomorrow.

Read this and other columns at capecodchronicle.com.

Now we are Six.

This is a special kind of snow. It lies untrod upon across the yard like an animal’s coat, rather than a blanket. It seems to have grown out from the land rather than having been laid down from above. Soft, almost furry, there is no sense of warmth at all.

The air is crystalline. Floating around the low single digits, if not below, the air temperature will not allow for any humidity. Yet the other night we had flurries. Fog, the radio suggested, out here, closest to the ocean’s mediating embrace.

Fog at six. Fog at four. Fog at two. Fog at nothing. There is no fog when it is this cold. Not for very long, at least, and it changes to flurries. What comes down is the lightest precipitation one could dream. It barely falls at all, but swirls up and around, and down and back. Tiny, individual snowflakes, each with their own agenda, their own chaotic purpose.
The landscape of yesterday and last week, once a collection of ice and snow patches that had been covered once and never melted, is softened again. It can be swept away with a broom, or blown with one’s mouth. Off the front steps and the rear window and sideviews.

There are no footprints on this snow. Days of sledding and romping and racing and snow creatures were melted away two weeks ago. The next round of winter, the real coming of the season from the second of our weekend blizzards, grew this white coat and brought the banishing cold of this weekend.

It was not without warning. Looking through images of last year at this time, the snow heights are higher. That brutal year encased us, though, getting us used to how very cold it would be. We were lulled this year. El Nino, the child, suggested we might go the whole three months without a real sense of cold. Berries hung on the privet still. Radiant light green grass still grew on dewy banks. Winter was not happening. We could get through this easily this time. As if we had earned a respite.

Winter is to be expected. Here, it will be cold. We know this when we chose to make a home here. We count ourselves lucky when things go well, the warm days, the sunshine, the green fields to amble through. We congratulate ourselves when spring comes and we made it through yet again. We believe warmth is normal.

The beach parking lot looks out. The blue of the sky is one complete shade, the blue of the water a deeper one. Fewer cars are out even though the air is brilliantly clear. The horizon stretches out, cloudless. Whitecaps hit the outer beach, which hangs on by a thread. It is too thin. Is it high tide or low right now? Washovers, spillovers are not singular events, it seems now. It is not so much a breach to envision but a total disappearance of the sand. It is in motion, below the surface. In the spring it will show up elsewhere. The wind buffets the few vehicles here. It has blown the windshield clear of the clean, silty snow. A coffee cup and a running engine keep zero at bay for humans. Few have ventured forth. It is blindingly cold out. Even the faintest breeze is like a knife.

That spring will come, we know. That is a different time. In February, now, it can get colder. This is when we have been reminded, at last. A snow shovel. A parka. A pair of boots. A load of firewood. We have prepared, we think. This time of year reminds us how precarious we truly are. No other time of year can we walk outside and die. It is not the snow. It is the cold.

We know the natural state of things, the original state of the universe. It is to be different from what we would like. It is within the distance between planets. Cold is the natural state. Warmth is the anomaly. What we see at six is closer to the truth. This is not a season. This is as it truly is. This could be the best to ever expect. At six.

Many years ago, when people still used paper maps, I recall my excitement at the debut of the new edition of Butterworth Cape Cod Atlas & Guidebook. I was about 20 and this was a big deal, mostly because I am a map geek, and the release of a new map was akin to a blockbuster movie release. Also, this was not some far away land that was featured – it was of the Cape – and I am, for better or worse, a yokel.

So it was with great fervor that, soon after turning to the map of Chatham, I found myself taking pen to paper to write to the Butterworth Map Company. Not praise them, but to take them to task with a list of corrections. The name of the road I grew up on was entirely wrong. That was annoying because when you live at the end of a tiny little road you hope UPS and FedEx and friends coming to visit will not give up.

This in the time before cell phones. Now they call 15 minutes after they said they’d be right there – right there — saying, “Where the heck is your road?”

But the other point that raised my hackles was the labeling of the very northeast corner of North Chatham as “Allen Point.” I had never heard this before. To me it was always “Minister’s Point.” And so I told them.

For full disclosure, the Butterworth Company provided me a great incentive. If you wrote to them with a mistake on their map, they would send you a copy of the map for free. No, I am not so much of a Yankee that I expected a map for each correction, although, certainly, I wouldn’t have faulted them for making me such an offer.

Years later I found out that indeed this feature of the land has gone by both Allen Point and Minister’s Point. I prefer the latter, but might concede now I didn’t deserve two maps. Not that I ever expected that, you understand.

But it got me thinking about how many names there have been for the same place. A number of local history buffs are aware that Shore Road was originally named “The Boulevard. ” Clearly, there were aspirations to swankiness when it was laid out around the turn of the last century. At the time I discovered this (and was cajoling the Butterworth Company for free stock), I was working for the selectmen and the surveyor of highways on an inventory of all the roads and ways in Chatham. It had turned out that, big surprise, the town didn’t actually own Shore Road.

So it was high time we figured out what roads the town did own, what the town didn’t own, what it thought it owned but didn’t, and what it did own but didn’t think it did. Indeed, I found a number of each.

The thing that would confound me, however, was the names of certain streets from around 1900. Perhaps you could direct me to Cherry Street? It runs from Main Street to the Boulevard. That could be Seaview Street. Or even Old Harbor Road. In this case, it is now known as Chatham Bars Avenue – which itself was previously Chatham Bars Inn Avenue. I suspect that prior to the building of CBI, it wouldn’t make sense to call it Chatham Bars Inn Avenue. Are there still cherry trees on Cherry Street?

Realizing a map would be necessary to keep some of these straight, I created one and began to notice a theme. The aforementioned Cherry Street. Cedar Street, of course, is still named that. Pine Street, which ran from Main Street to Orleans Road. Any guesses? It seemed someone was in a mood to erase the heritage of Chatham since we know this today as Crowell Road.

As I recall there was also an Oak Street, Elm Street and Poplar Avenue. If you have ever seen photos from this time, Chatham looks like South Dakota. Barely a twig in the place. You can probably guess that the names were chosen then not because they were lined with oaks or cherries or pines. OK, maybe pines, because that’s the Cape Cod state tree. But they were probably all four feet tall. Regardless, the names were perhaps moreaspirational than descriptive. So maybe each street had a single tree on it, but the hope was for more. Someday.

I guess I kind of like this, though. It calls forth not just what this town was like over a century prior – the image everyone wants to have of Chatham – but of a possible alternative history. A Chatham where the railroad depot still functions. Electric streetcars run down Main Street (which is one-way from Cherry Street to Victory Circle). The sailors from the Naval Air Station in Chatham Port are typically found playing ball against the Life Saving Service, and the Monomoy School is located down in Whitewash Village.

A steampunk Cape Cod is a road you can travel down endlessly with Halloween around the corner. Perhaps it suits the season better to think of what could have been than to what has actually been lost.

Come to think of it, that all sounds like a good idea for a map.

Read this and Andy’s other columns online at The Cape Cod Chronicle. 

Cape Cod’s Gumshoe Historians profile John Kendrick of the Columbia Expedition

O Captain! My Captain! The man picked to command the Columbia Expedition had a lifetime of experience. Militiaman. Whaler. Privateer. Gumshoe Historians Andrew Buckley and Matt Griffin track John Kendrick from the South Orleans/East Harwich shores of Pleasant Bay to Edgartown Harbor, then over to the house on Wareham Narrows bought with booty from the Revolution.

Locations: Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard & South Coast of Massachusetts.

Interviews: Alan McClennen, Nancy Cole, Thornton Gibbs, Benjamin Dunham

Boston rocker Shea Rose again introduces this episode, the second in this series from Hit and Run History. Creator and host Andrew Buckley and Assistant director Matthew Griffin start off in very familiar territory – just a couple towns over from their native Chatham. Sharing lineage with Columbia’s commander, the two start with an interview with Alan McClennen, Jr. of Friends of Pleasant Bay. The big question is what lessons would Kendrick have learned at an early age here, in this remote corner of New England, that would make him the man chosen to lead the first American voyage ’round the world?

Watch “The Commander” here or subscribe to the Hit and Run History video podcast on iTunes.

A year ago at this time, I was spending a glorious warm and sunny day on Saunders Island in the West Falklands. On this island about the size of the city of Boston with a population of six (that’s people – there were thousands of sheep and penguins), our film crew was packing for departure the next morning.

It had been a good week here a few hundred miles north of the Antarctic Circle, having followed Cape Cod’s John Kendrick and the Columbia Expedition to their landing spot on the first-ever voyage ‘round the world.

The next day, Friday, we were to catch the Falkland Islands Government Air Service (FIGAS) bush plane back to the capital of Stanley, and then the weekly LAN Airlines on Saturday for the journey home. Friday was my birthday, too.

Departing on Friday.

Friday the 13th.

So that didn’t work out. Fog crept into the Falklands, and FIGAS used to flying in the prevailing weather of high winds balked at doing the same in fog.

We were stuck, missed the LAN flight home and were stuck for one more week in the Falklands. Over 7,000 miles from home. Happy birthday.

I really do like my birthday, though. It’s May and typically the tulips are all out here on the Cape. Except for this year when they bloomed soon after St. Patrick’s Day. I heard that while I was gone, the weather here was similar to that in the Falklands, the seasons being reversed so that down there it was like November here. Except here was like November here. Or perhaps more like May here, which usually involves week-long nor’easters that blow the blooms off the trees and have us back in our winter parkas for a week or more.

There’s annual town meeting, too, which I have always been pleased Chatham tries to schedule for my convenience. As a student of political science, my point of view was informed by the purest form of direct democracy in the world. And who doesn’t want to cut short their birthday dinner to go sit on a hard chair or bench for four hours of discussion – less than five minutes on a multimillion dollar budget, but perhaps an hour for an article of a thousand dollars or less? Except as a single parent, the real imperative in recent years is to get nine-year-old Sofie to bed on time.

Well, at least there’s a town election we can go to. She loves elections, and always asks me why I chose the person I did, and what job each person is seeking. Having been a selectman, I can kind of describe what it is, but it usually comes out sounding less important than it is. “We sit around a table and talk and vote to ask people who work for the town to do things.” No wonder only three people are running for two spots. It is still three, yes? It’s hard enough to explain all this to her.

But while other people get free drinks on their birthday, fate often conspires against me. Aside from being stranded far from home last year, when I turned 16 a Winnebago hit me in a VW bug in front of the Cape Cod Mall, and years later someone hit me and tried to run me over while I was already on crutches. I was thinking that this year I just ought to wear a helmet and hole up in the basement with some delivery pizza. Except there is no delivery pizza in Chatham, and I’m not so sure about taking the risk of heading out to pick one up.

I’ve been hoping that bad fortune used up all its firepower last year with the stranding. Some years, all I do is sprain my ankle. But that’s more of a sure sign of spring. With big feet and small ankles, I only need to get out on uneven pavement after months inside for me to soon end up face down in the street. Doesn’t count.

Same goes for the recent profile of me in this year’s Chatham Magazine. Written by The Cape Cod Chronicle’s Jennifer Sexton, her words were later changed at the editorial offices of the Hyannis-based publication to claim that I am “currently a Chatham selectman.”

In reality, it has been 10 years this May since I was on the board of selectmen. If it weren’t for the fact that this erroneous correction reflects poorly (and without merit) on Ms. Sexton, or that they misspelled Sofie’s name wrong despite having the correct spelling also provided by Ms. Sexton, I would almost laugh. Could I use this to get a better table at CBI’s Mother’s Day brunch?

But absurdities don’t count. I’m watching out for something seriously bad.

The suspense has been killing me. I really have grown fond of all 10 fingers and all 10 toes, and seeing through both my eyes, and more often than not having the ability to put a couple words together coherently enough to order that pizza. I’d hate to lose any of these.

Especially the pizza. Deliveries gratefully accepted at my bunker through Monday. Drop it and run for your life.

On the breezy, sandy shores of the Straits of Magellan, a man in brown coveralls is smoking a plank. One end sits in a repurposed oil drum and slowly the other end of the wood is being pulled in a lateral direction. Warped, the plank is, to sheath the sides of a schooner.

www.avaandsofie.com

A century or two ago, it wasn’t uncommon for a young Cape Codder to head off around Cape Horn to China.

Multi-year voyages, these were as much education as employment, setting the stage for a career on the sea. Go out as a cabin boy, come back as a an able-bodied seaman, then leave as a seaman, come back as a mate, and then mate to shipmaster.

For a three-year voyage, that’s nine years right there. It is no wonder that sea captains typically retired, if they survived, in their 30s. With the capital they had accumulated, they might set up a store to support themselves and their families. So it was a young man’s game, a very young man’s game. But exclusively for men.

How times have changed.

Last spring, my daughter Sofie and her friend Ava took to skies, flying across the globe to visit China’s Pearl River Delta. No pleasure trip this was. That is unless your idea of relaxation is two girls, age 7 and 8, exploring and filming for 13 hour-days of nonstop movement.

Like the ships of old, this young crew were looking to bring back a valuable cargo.

In this case, the cargo was their experiences, to be shared after months of studio work, with voice-overs and film editing. Through My Eyes premiered their China series on WGBH last October as the centerpiece of their Kids’ website. Sofie and Ava’s cargo were 10 videos, documenting their firsthand encounters with the one area of China open to their predecessors centuries earlier. Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Macau.

I had the honor to participate, and to watch my daughter visit the same places I had 13 years earlier. She had seen pictures of the Five Story Pagoda in Guangzhou, Victoria Peak, overlooking the skyscrapers of Hong Kong, and swirling tiles of Senado Square in Macau. I have to admit I still get a little choked up watching the episode in the Foreigners Cemetery in the Pearl River. Having grown up exploring the cemeteries of Chatham, she learned her alphabet reading the inscriptions on the tombstones. Now here she was in a place I had found hidden in the jungle a decade earlier that told the stories of the sailors who nevercame home.

She and Ava got to convey their own personal observations of the people they met and the places they visited. For the elementary school classrooms watching all across the country, what these two girls were saying and doing was gripping. Much more so than if an adult had been on-camera or off, spoon feeding the information they deemed important. Kids see things we don’t.

For centuries, those who have grown up on the Cape have learned to survive by their ingenuity. A seasonal economy in a place with few resources means you have to remain flexible, act on opportunity, and often take those skills elsewhere if you ever wish to have a life here. Yet those houses down on Lower Main Street in Chatham are a testament to the hold of the place on those who would span the globe for their livelihood. It is a good place to live, once you have the means.

That is Cape Cod’s creative economy at work. It was in evidence when Matt Griffin and I set off to tell the story of the Columbia Expedition, and its commander, John Kendrick. It continued when our Hit and Run History crew dove into Cape Verde during the dengue fever epidemic as we followed the Columbia’s track. And when we were stranded in the Falklands for an extra week last year, by making the most of it by getting deeper into our story. We seize every opportunity to increase the value of our cargo.

So these two girls, age 7 and 8, left as globetrotting newbies and returned as an experienced travel show crew. Fittingly, they’ve set their sights now on a trip around Cape Horn this spring. Natural science will be at the fore as they explore the fjords, glaciers and penguins at the very end of the Earth.

And perhaps just as fittingly, Sofie’s added another option to her career plans. Besides wanting to be a veterinarian, she told me, “Once Through My Eyes wraps up, I think I want to open a store. But when I’m older because we still have lots of places to go. Like when I’m a teenager.”

Read this and other columns online at The Cape Cod Chronicle.

On Christmas Day, two presents had been left unopened until 1 p.m. Sofie brought it out for all her extended family to see. She already had quite a haul. Skates from Santa. A Zhu-Zhu pet from her grandmother. A bracelet from her cousin. And lots of clothes.

The note on the smaller one said “Open me first!” She deserves a lot of credit for remembering exactly at the appointed time to get both presents and then thoughtfully proceed as per instructions. Inside the small box was something fairly familiar: her passport.

Now, for background, you have to know my daughter was born in Germany, and lived her first year there. She’s visited her Austrian grandparents many times over there. Subsequently, Sofie has had two passports – her first issued under the auspices of the US Department of Defense, and her second from the State Department, like most of us.

Her more recent one has stamps all over it. Belgium. Germany. Canada. The Netherlands. She’s crossed the Atlantic more than most people ever will in their whole lives. Getting on a plane for her is like getting on a bus for other kids.

“Open me Second!” read the other present, being a little flatter and larger. It also had some math clues: “What is 6 times 7? Now add one. After you find that, what is 2 times 3?”

Unwrapping the package, she found a child’s picture atlas of the world. That made her happy enough, to be sure. One of her favorite place mats at the dinner table is a map of the world, and it prompts all sorts of questions. Where have you been? What do they speak in India? What do they eat in Uruguay?

Times like that, I am glad I can pull out my laptop so we can go about finding the answers.

Six times seven, plus one, after a little figuring, was 43, and that was definitely a page number. And she opened to the spread on China. “Two times three is easy, Papa!” she said, and scanned the page for the number six. The entry on the page was for Hong Kong.

For the last two years, Sofie has been asking me when she could go to China. Or Hawaii. I told her it was probably one or the other. The questions started before we went to Disney World, but kicked into high gear when she learned that, having hit Orlando for five days, upon completion it had now fallen down to the bottom of the list. There were other places to see in the world.

“Like China,” she noted. Right, I said. But, I added, she’d have to be a little older, a little more mature. Eight was the age I picked. That also gave me time to save up the money.

The first and only time I was in China was in 1998. It was the last few days of a 27-day odyssey through Southeast Asia, looking for the wreck of Captain John Kendrick’s Lady Washington. I had flown from Manila into Guangzhou with a 48-hour visa. After a night at the Sun-Yat Sen University, I was squired around in the by grad student Zhou Xiang, hopping sampans to visit a 200-year-old cemetery for Westerners located on an island controlled by the Chinese military.Then it was into a taxi for a breakneck 90-minute taxi ride to an industrial park on the far outskirts of the city where the new catamaran would whisk me in a few hours down to Hong Kong. Coupled with a few nights in nearby Macao, the place left quite an impression.

Since then I’ve been able to remain in touch with Zhou Xiang. While she was studying in Sweden, she brought her husband through Wiesbaden when I was living there. Two years later, while doing post-doctoral work at Harvard, she once looked after our prized corgi, and became friends with a one year-old Sofie.

So in December, having won a grant from Mass. Humanities to promote our documentary series following the Columbia Expedition, I received an e-mail notification. The Hong Kong International Film Festival deadline for submissions was fast approaching. It would be held the end of March and early April. Sofie’s eighth birthday falls within that timeframe. And application fees for film festivals falls within the purview of the grant (if not the travel itself).

Fingers crossed, we applied online within hours of the deadline. While it is a roll of the dice, there are definitely business reasons to go regardless of being selected or not. Our story took place partly in China, so it certainly should be of interest there.

But if I were to go, it would have to be in the company of this four-foot-high seasoned world traveler. She loves potstickers, wants the next language she learns to be Chinese, and still has empty pages in her passport.

This is quite a time to return to China. There is a steady drumbeat of news stories contrasting their surging economy with our own. Their move from a manufacturer of cheap toys toward a 21st century model of next-generation green technology, and their ability to jumpstart their economy through staggering investments in infrastructure, really makes us look like we’re squabbling over the placement of deck chairs on the Titanic.

I’m curious to see the changes that have occurred there during a time marked roughly since Sofie’s birth. Such as that out-of-the-way ferry terminal which now stands at the heart of a new Guangzhou. It would be as if downtown Boston moved to Foxboro.

This sort of thing nags at me, and makes me wonder if as Americans, we’ve forgotten how to build things. Or simply lost the will.Besides, there’s a Disney World in Hong Kong, a day trip to which will make a great birthday present. And I happily get to see that immediately fall to the bottom of a very long list again.