Last summer, when Hurricane Bill was approaching on through, Matt Griffin and I headed out to see if we could cover the upcoming story. The story in this case being the pre-storm hype. That and all the news trucks camped out in the half-hour parking spaces in front of the lighthouse and none sporting a single orange ticket on their windshield of a violation for overstaying the half-hour limit. Never mind the network camera equipment set up on the same beach that the local yoga class has to pay hundreds of dollars for a permit to use.

The lesson being, we supposed, that you can do whatever you want in the New Chatham as long as you are a) from out of town, and b) famous.

Poor locals are expected to follow the rules and pay. A perverse reverse logic.

Fittingly, the media machine that seems to have become much too familiar with Chatham during the summer, and the non-stories that can be inflated in order to rationalize a long weekend here (sharks, storms, a house painted green), was duly skewered in our film on the pre-storm frenzy. Likewise, when Bill failed to materialize as any real threat because, as predicted, it was 300 miles offshore, we went out again the next morning. Assessing “storm damage” for this installment, we were able to interview CNN personnel from New York about, well, the whole bunch of nothing they came here to cover.

Then they were back the next weekend for Tropical Depression Danny. That turned out to be just a whole lot of rain. From what I could tell, the worst it did was to deposit in my skiff a couple inches of rain and, somehow, a large rotting horseshoe crab. For the media, I’m sure the breakfast brunch at Chatham Bars Inn was impeccable as always. That’s a commitment to the news.

But with such a low opinion of the media and those who believe them, I felt it was only a matter of time before they would be, at long last, proven correct. This broken clock had to be right at least twice a day. And so I came to wonder if that would be Earl.

This wasn’t because of anything I saw on television or observed locally. Rather, it was far from the coast, at over 6,000 feet above sea level in northern New England. For our end of the summer trek, like last summer, Sofie and I drove to the top of Mount Washington. We timed it just right, as the highs in the surrounding area were forecast for the mid-90s. The day before the observatory at the summit was reporting 54 degrees and gusts of 76 mph. I was wondering if the narrow, windy road, free of guard rails or shoulders with drops down sheer cliffs, would be closed. No.

It was a brilliant day, with temperatures in the 60s. Gusts were up to 50 mph. We took a hike 1,200 feet down to the Lake of the Clouds. The whole time we remained above the tree line.

Following our way back down, we made the necessary stop at Dairy Queen, then continued our cross-country journey to the coast, ending up in Freeport for some lastminute back-to-school shopping. Passing through Naples, Maine, I saw an LED sign out front of the fire station with “101 F” in glowing red. I assume it did not mean one hundred and one feet.

Record high temperatures down belowand with hurricane-force winds combined with sunny, mild temps at the nexus of four weather systems high above gave me pause. Perhaps, yes, this time this might just be the storm we’ve been looking for.

The next day, following our day at Water Country, I stopped at the Wal-Mart in Portsmouth, N.H. to pick up several packs of D batteries. Not so much because I thought I would need them, but because I had been informed that they were now non-existent in Chatham. I imagined myself in a bulky sweatshirt, hood up and skulking darkened street corners while people slowed down their cars and ask, “Hey man, you know where we can get some D?”

After all, those fall dresses from LL Bean and Peanut Buster Parfaits weren’t going to pay for themselves.

Once home, we moved furniture off the deck and waited for the rain to start. It was forecast for noon. I felt lucky that I was able to squeeze in a run up to Sofie’s pediatrician in Wellfleet. On the way back, the rain began, and followed us down to Orleans. Once in Harwich, it stopped. Back in Chatham, it was almost sunny. But oppressively humid. I considered for a moment that my last column about a rain shadow surrounding Chatham might not be as far off as I had thought. But I saw the radar. Something big coming.

Yeah. The rain here finally hit at 8 p.m. Yes, it was heavy. But we still didn’t get as much as Yarmouth. And the wind was barely more than a breeze for most of the afternoon. Although I read in the Boston Globe of “a deafening wind” down at the Chatham Lighthouse, I can report that a mile away on the Oyster Pond the wind was not audible from inside our home. That is pretty unusual for any windy day.

So, having partially succumbed to the belief that this could be a real hurricane, I looked back at the real weather indicators. We were on the weak side of the storm. It was a Category 3 off North Carolina, and as it moved north it was likely to be a Category 1 by the time it got here. The barometer (remember that, National Weather Service?) was not dropping precipitously.

The “Better Safe Than Sorry” crowd really needs to take it on the chin this time. Are we to go on alert for any level of risk? Well, crying “storm” one too many times undercuts credibility. We want the public to listen when the threat truly is serious and credible. And saying it is hard to predict these sorts of things when we can send probes to Mars and stuff powerful handheld computers into tiny little phones strains credulity. It seems that as the ability to accurately predict weather increases, so does the need to be frighten Americans with the greatest extremes of it. So it would be refreshing to use our best intelligence in making smart choices next time a hurricane or snowstorm heads our way. Perhaps weather forecasters and public officials could set an example by noting the words of Edward R. Murrow: “We are not descended from fearful men.”

In the mean time, if your flashlight’s batteries are dead I’ve got a nice supply of high-grade Copper Top.

This summer, as we’ve done for the past couple years, we’ll take the small boat with the flaking paint job and semi-reliable outboard motor out the Oyster Pond, down the river, around the corner of Stage Harbor and into Nantucket Sound. Hugging the coast of Morris Island, we’ll head east along the tight channel and eventually cross over toward the northwest corner of North Monomoy Island.

Approaching the shallows – the flooded expanse that is the Common Flat running well west from Monomoy into the Sound — we’ll cut the engine (assuming it is still running) far from the sand bars that expose themselves for hours during low tide. The clear, clean water around us will be maybe two feet deep. We will be far from any land that is reliably dry, yet the depth of the water for hundreds of yards will be nothing more than up to my knees.

The anchor dropped, we’ll settle into a lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and chips, washed down with pink lemonade, and juicy red plums for dessert. Then it will be into the water, donning the masks and flippers, and armed with dip nets for some serious snorkeling.

This discovery was made when I beached the boat on the edge of the flats, and had gone to test the area with my clam hoe. Sofie had never been clamming before, so it seemed this hot and sunny July day was a prime opportunity. What I didn’t expect to find was nothing. There were just no siphon holes at all in an area where I had always been able to find some clams. We walked up and down the edge of the beach, expanded immensely by the dropping tide, and found no clams, no holes, and of course, no clam diggers.

Pushing the boat off the shore, wading back towards the channel, I was reassessing our plans when something very strong and sharp clamped on my toe. I nearly jumped straight up into the boat. It was a sand crab, just below the surface, unhappy with my intrusion. I donned my pair of black neoprene scuba boots, and maneuvered the boat along the south edge of the channel and into the acres of water that is never quite exposed, nor never quite deep enough to take a boat. We tethered our inner tubes to the boat and floated on the surface, face down with our new masks and snorkels.

Every once in a while, we would see a crab skitter by, and I’d grab my basket rake and pull it up into a bucket. With a little water to rest it, the crab would receive a name and probably a serenade from Sofie while back on the boat. (They are too small to eat, really.) Then it would be returned to the sea, and we’d set off on search of some other prize.

It would be easy to conclude the bounty of clams that were once here have been decimated by sand crabs. It is probably no more their fault than any clammer using a simple wooden-handled rake. But clams are cyclical. Here today, gone tomorrow…here again. Currents change, which affects the flow of nutrients. With South Beach connected to Monomoy, the Atlantic doesn’t wash in here as it once did. Depths of this soft sand change.

The area just north of here, between the east coast of Morris Island and the west shore of South Beach, is becoming more sheltered, and has an environment more conducive to scallops and quahogs. So this is not exactly bad news.

This all brings to mind, however, the ongoing struggle with the federal government regarding the continuing right of Chatham commercial shellfishermen to harvest clams from the flats surrounding Monomoy Island. So much effort and money has been spent on making a case to the policy makers in Washington, and yet the same issues face us, as unresolved as ever. The feds feel restrained by federal law, the politicians are afraid of national environmental groups, and those groups oppose based on principle.

As a selectman, I suggested perhaps, as the town of Chatham builds it case based upon the science and the unique history of shellfishing on Monomoy, that we initiate dialogue with the individual members of the organizations that were reportedly threatening all sort of actions should commercial shellfishing be allowed to continue here. We had heard from our elected representatives and legal counsel that this was a bad idea. No explanation, but this was the “let the process work itself out” argument.

Of course, these same people giving this advice were the one who stood to benefit from acting as intermediaries with, as they put it, “the bird people.” As if they were a bogeyman. Not enough grains of salt were taken with their counsel, then. Politicians will tend to do the thing that gets them the most attention with the least amount of courage. Lawyers will tend to use up every dollar of a retainer that is advanced.

To be honest, I can no more fault them for their nature any more than a crab pinching my toe in the sand as I walk by. The crabs are neither the problem nor the solution. They have become a distraction. If we are serious about fixing this ongoing concern, then we need to start talking to the people with whom we differ, and find how wide the distance really is between our positions on this one area we care for.

“They keep feeling like long weekends,” Sofie said this Monday morning as she picked up her backpack and headed out the door.  “Why?”

I remember the first time she uttered the dreaded three-letter word.  It was my birthday a few years back, and she was just getting into her evening bubble bath.  It started off  as several different questions, “Wha-who-howwwwwwwWHY?”  This truly was the death knell for the last shreds of my parental sanity.

On the other hand, Monday morning’s WHY was definitely worth examining.  The previous weekend we had started off with baseball practice, a bike ride, then heading to Hyannis for our long-delayed digital television purchase, some indulgent investigation of our new HD channels, then the next day’s riding for the Pan Mass Challenge in the Brewster in Bloom Parade, a late lunch at Friendly’s, some helping in her neighbor’s garden, and finally watching a movie on that new HDTV.

Her assessment the next morning was that it felt like a five-day weekend.  And this morning, her aforesaid observation, and wondering about that.

I replied, “Well, maybe with the nicer weather, we can do so much more.”  Might be that with my seven-year-old Barbie Tomboy now passing four feet in height, her world of possible activities is growing as fast as our well-watered yard.

Last week I introduced the concept of “Time flies when you’re having fun.”  I’ll hold off for now on the related idea, “Summer is why we suffer through nine months of winter here.”

When I returned from Germany with my baby girl, alone, in 2004, it was with the desire to have her grow up much as I had.  In a safe small town near the water, surrounded by a large extended family.   And while she’s had a fairly active childhood, with summer rec programs, soccer, skating, tennis, South Beach campouts, and all the rest, I think there’s a certain shift in consciousness that comes about this age following first grade.

Now proficient in reading and math, she not only understands the concept of putting money into her savings account – she can make a sign for the much-anticipated cash cow of a lemonade stand.  She’s started writing her own stories, which leads to a desire to explore.  And unlike when she was younger, she has a greater physical ability to explore in relative safely.  I don’t have to keep an eye on her 100 percent of the time, although I am definitely the preferred playtime companion.  Still.

In February, when we had to take three different flights to get to Munich, I got a preview of this new level of confidence.  She was frequently ahead of me with her carry-on, as we navigated from one side of a large airport to another.  She could read the signs for the terminal or gates, and in reading the clocks be able to tell how much time we had to get there.  The concept of currency exchange still was tough, but then again I’ve traveled with a few adults who after a week were still struggling.

So if this is how we are heading into summer, I can only imagine what I will have on my hands by the end. By Labor Day, I am probably going to be looking back at countless skinned knees, bug bites, bruises, cuts from stepping on shells or sea glass, burns from getting too close to the grill or campfire even though I said stay well away, near-misses with oblivious drivers, sugar high crashes, episodes of getting separated in large crowds, jellyfish stings, waterlogging, stepping in God-knows-what and tracking it in the house, ice-cold garden hose rinse-offs after the beach, slips over the side of the boat or canoe, grumpy days from “sleeping” out in the tent the night before and not getting any rest, bugs eaten while berry picking, rashes from experimentation with poison ivy resistance, a few cat scratches, two bee stings, and at least one random dog bite.

That is, if we are lucky.  Given that she will likely survive intact, the greatest challenge she may face is remembering to regularly write at least some of it down.  This may be the year of the summer journal — to remember why we’re here.

I’ve already written about the scheme of the regional school with Harwich, and how simply bigger is only, well, bigger. Not better. Still, money has been spent on this because the state is pushing all districts to try regionalization, and Harwich needs a new high school. At this upcoming annual town meeting, Chatham voters will be asked to fund yet another $10,000 study to evaluate the benefits and costs of regionalization.

Really?

That amount sticks in my head because it is the same that the Women of Fishing Families were shorted this year for running the Chatham Maritime Festival.

It especially sticks in my head because I don’t think anyone has any doubt but that said “study” on regionalization will be anything but favorable. After all, Harwich (who wants to regionalize with Chatham) is paying half the cost, and the report is mandated by the state (who wants the same). Under the circumstances, it is highly unlikely that the conclusions will be little more than tired old “glass is half-full” assumptions and one-size-fits-all arguments that have been employed in one suburb after the other.

And still, when completed, this study will be used as a gong by pro-regionalization supporters. Before they have even begun, they are citing Peter “I-Never-Met-A-Town-That-Wouldn’t-Be-Better-Off-Regionalized” Francese. Of course, Mr. Francese is a demographer, not an educator. Just last week in a New Hampshire newspaper he predicted Americans would be so angry at the federal government that they would throw out their census forms. Francese had no data to back this up. Instead, he relied upon listening to talk radio.

So this is the guy we’re relying on to make decisions about the future of education.

Really?

In our case, however, Francese looks at the entire Cape and predicts a dwindling school population, coupled with older voter unwillingness to fund the schools. What he doesn’t factor in, specifically for Chatham, is that we steal students from other systems through school choice. We do that because we are small. There’s a cachet to Chatham, too, no doubt. But if we regionalize, we lose that.

In return we’re supposed to get state-of-the-art computer labs.

Really?

We’re supposed to get AP courses.

For all students? No. Just those who qualify. For the classes we can afford to hire a teacher for.

And more sports. Like hockey? The game that we already play with Harwich and the school committee tried to cut funding for recently?

Or maybe football. But hockey and football seasons overlap, and you might be talking some of the same kids then, so you’ll end up with, what, an opportunity for a handful of players from Chatham.

OK, but there is a downside. I can think of several. The first, as I’ve written before, is the way a regional school system’s budget would be presented to Chatham Town Meeting for an up or down vote. If it is amended, there will be a great wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth as it must then be approved by the voters of Harwich.

That shouldn’t be a problem. I can hear that familiar argument trotted out at Chatham Town Meeting: “We have to pass this or else we’ll have to start from scratch.” Democracy in action.

But here’s an even more concrete argument: I have a daughter. Sofie. She’s seven. She’s in first grade. The bus doesn’t come down our road. When she goes to middle school in a few years, she’ll ride her bike a mile and a half. It will take 10 minutes. Or she could walk. Or, in a pinch, I could drive her. That will take less than five minutes.

Same with picking her up.

In Chatham, even the house furthest from the middle school and high school is only five miles away. On the other hand, if the schools were regionalized, with either the middle or high school in Harwich, Sofie is looking at a seven-mile drive. Walking is out. Biking, for most of the year, is out. Other students in Chatham will be looking at up to a 10-mile bus ride. And that’s a straight line – which no bus does. How early are they going to have to get up?

Worse, with so many kids having after school activities, how many times a week am I going to have to go drive all the way into Harwich Center to pick her up? And if she forgets something at home, that’s me having to lose the better part of an hour during a workday on that roundtrip.

And we all know how much kids with drivers licenses love to continue to take the bus. So we’re looking at a convoy, twice a day, of carloads of Chatham teenagers on the roads between Chatham and Harwich.

We cancelled school this winter because of a threat of snow that never materialized. How about real ice- and snow-covered streets? Are they suddenly going to be safer for our kids to drive to school on just because they lead to a regional high school?

Not really. No.

Chatham has a good school system, with good test scores, small class sizes and strong local control. Yet we are being asked to throw good money at a study that says it can get even better if we get hitched with Harwich.

Really?

Yes, this year I got behind on pulling the boat.  I usually run a little late on getting it out before the Oyster Pond (a salt water inlet off Nantucket Sound) freezes over.  This fall, however, preparations for and the trip to Cape Verde took over my schedule.  And then there was the issue of the boat itself.

See, in years past, we’ve had Novi skiffs.  They’re the best all-around work boat for around here because they don’t have a deep keel (great for all the shallow water around here) and they are steady.  Not speed boats.  And they are self-bailing — in that the deck is high than the water line, so all the rain just washes out the stern.

But this year, I had to resurrect an old dory from the back yard.  Fixed her up and gave her the name “Li’l Boots”, nickname of my daughter, Sofie.

Li’l Boots was a mixed blessing.  Advantage:  free.  Disadvantage — not self-bailing.  So after every rain, it needed to be emptied of water.

Now, this boat was light enough to pull up on shore rather than leave on the mooring.  So every once in a while I’d just walk down and pull the plug on the stern and empty it onto the shore. BUT, this made things tough for moving it since I couldn’t pull the plug until it was low tide.  But then the boat was too heavy to move until high tide came up and floated it away.

I never quite timed this right — empty Li’l Boots at low, push it off at high — and coordinate with my father to get the trailer hooked up to his dump truck and then drive down to the town landing to pick the boat and me up.  It was either raining.  Or snowing.  Or the sun had gone down too early.  Or I was working or away.  Or the pond had frozen up earlier than usual and made rowing impossible.

But I finally did this time. Yessir.  High tide was in the morning.  Li’l Boots was floating. Weather was January Thaw-mild.  Remembered to go down in the afternoon, get the boat fully emptied.  Then heard the weather was going to change drastically, temperatures would drop to the teens during the day, and that meant the pond would definitely freeze.  Perhaps for a good long time this time.  One winter it froze in December and didn’t thaw until March.  So this could’ve been my last chance.

This morning I went down to the shore.  Sunny, but 17 degrees Fahrenheit with 33 mph winds making the wind chill more like 1.  What’s more, it was a strong West wind, meaning it was driving everything down the pond.  But that was to my advantage — it was the direction I was heading.

So I dropped the oars down at the boat, called my dad to tell him I’d be leaving soon. He’d meet me at 10:45 or so down at the landing.

Now, the thing is, the engine in the Li’l Boots is the same age as the boat.  33.  We had it checked out thoroughly this spring, and it ran well.  Until it decided not to.  Then, given half an hour, would start up again and run fine… for another half hour.  We pulled the boat back into the yard.  Mechanic came, checked it out, and it ran fine.  No problems.  Put it back in.  Same problem.

In short, it wasn’t running in January.  So I’d be rowing.  But not so far.  Might take 15 minutes.  With the wind, even less.  All I had to do was hug the shore for a quarter mile.

Two socks.  Jeans.  Old raggedy fleece pants over the jeans.  Black rubber boots.  Faux Under Armor long sleeve shirt.  Turtle neck.  Sweater.  Patriots hoodie.  Fleece hoodie over that.  Over all that, I donned my really cool mariner’s coat which is not only warm and dry, but has foam in the lining, making it a Class III flotation device.  Just in case.

On the way down the path to the shore, I heard someone yell out. It was a construction guy, working on my neighbor’s house.  He asked if I was heading out clamming, and what was the price.  I told him I was just moving the boat, but if he heard a splash…

And then it was simply a matter of wading through the water in my black rubber boots, pulling the anchor, and shoving off from the flooded meadow bank.  Except the anchor didn’t want to come up.

It was stuck under the meadowbank.  The only way to get it out was to get into the boat, push off from shore, then pull from the opposite direction and it would come up.  As I did so, I realized that I really should not have worn the ski gloves.  Sure, they’re warm, which is important on a bitterly cold day like today.  But in handling the anchor line, it became quickly obvious they were not waterproof in the slightest.  My hands were soaked.

I have a great pair of gloves just for this, too.  Actually, they are like super-gauntlets, made of thick plastic, insulated, and run all the way up to the shoulder, and attach to each other by an elastic strap.  Great for winter work on the water.  And I had forgot them down in the basement.

But no big deal.  It was a short row.  Off I go.

Another thing to mention.  The oars.  These are only 6 feet long.  Li’l Boots is about 5 feet wide.  So when I sit down to row, very little of the oar blade actually dips in the water.  To get any purchase on the water, I have to extend them out, but that diminishes the leverage I have.  Not the best things to be using, but I got a wind pushing me.

The wind was pushing me.  But it wanted to push me towards the middle of the pond.  I wanted to stay close to the north shore of the pond. It became a struggle to point the nose of the boat back to shore.  Didn’t need to row forward so much.  Just wanted to aim the boat back towards my destination.

The left oar jumped out of its oarlock.  So I set down the right oar, grabbed at the left one to put it back in its lock.  And that’s when I heard the clunk.

The right oar was in the water.

It took a little time for this to register.  There was the oar – one of the two oars necessary to row a boat – off on its own, with no means of me to get to it because, after all, I would need it to complete the set of two needed to row to it.  Which I did not have.  I had one, and one oar is about as useful in rowing as one hand is for clapping.  Which is to say, you can still use it somewhat effectively, like to smack yourself in the face.  For clapping, that is.

So there was the oar, floating along down the shore, but not as quick as I was.  And the wind, now having Li’l Boots at its mercy and deciding I made as good a sail as any, pushed us further along and out – out – out towards the middle of the pond.  The oar continued on its trajectory, and would hit the landing eventually.  Perhaps that explains it – it had determined on its own to get to the landing, saw that staying with me and the other oar was going to involve a lot of work, and thought, “Hey, I can get there just as well myself without doing much at all.  I’ll just hop over here then…”

And abandoned ship.

I should not complain.  This oar clearly has a genuine Cape Cod attitude.

And it was about this time the wind started to pick up more.  Of course it would.  Having far too much experience with lost oars, the Oyster Pond, west winds and such from boyhood, I kedged.  I pulled out the anchor and heaved it as close to the oars as I could.

Then I pulled it in.  Slowly, the boat  swung around to the opposite direction, facing into the wind.  I was stopped, and the oar continued its slow progress.  All this time, the strengthening wind saw me standing up in the bow, trying to throw something, then pulling on the anchor line, and decided to have fun.  Lots more waves hitting the boat.

That’s about the time I discovered that there had been a small amount of water left in the bottom of the boat from yesterday, and it had frozen.  Slippery.  Slippery deck I was standing on.  My wet gloves were starting to freeze, too.

At this point in our story, I recalled the story of a Captain Ryder of Chathamport who, after going off on one of those multi-year round-the-world voyages, returned home one night in a gale.  He was rowing his dory to shore when it overturned, and he died within a few hundred feet of his home.  They found his body the next morning on the shore.

Getting up to the anchor and pulling it up, all covered in heavy black mud, I had to rinse it.  And off Li’l Boots raced again, with nothing to hold her fast against the wind.  We passed the oar, but too far to reach, and further away from the shore we went.  I threw again.  And pulled.  Threw again.  And pulled.  And it a mooring buoy.  And pulled again.

With that happy thought in mind, I threw one more time, and was able to face the bow toward the shore, and swing around… and alongside came the oar.

Yay!  Now, with two oars I saw the waves were now breaking here, towards the center of the pond.  If I could just get back towards shore, I was nearly at the landing.

My father’s big red dump truck arrived at the landing, with the boat trailer.  I was directly across from him, a mere 100 yards.  But the boat would not turn.  I kept moving further down the shore, passing the landing, and the wind just kept me moving forward.  Two oars or one, they were just too short to do anything.  I threw out the anchor.  Tried to kedge to shore.  The waves were higher now, and I was risky overturning the boat.

I was able to signal to my father what was going on.  He yelled something, but over the wind I couldn’t hear.  I told him I’d have to let the boat go down to the other end of the pond and he signaled okay.  He’d meet me there.

Standing up, I was ready to get this three-hour tour over with.  The wind pushed me quickly along toward the Oyster Pond Beach.  Approaching, I saw that the first of the sea ice was forming, and gathering in crescent of slush along the sand.  As I neared the beach, I started rowing toward the center. From there, perhaps the truck could back down with the trailer.

The sea slush was the consistency of oatmeal.  Not what I was expecting.  The waves lifted it up and down, making slow progress in rowing.  I stepped out of the boat into a foot of water, meeting my father who has just arrived.

So, now, here we are, on a town beach in the middle of town.  High visibility.  Full daylight.  And we want to bring a 40 year-old dump truck down onto the sand, with a trailer, to pick up a boat.  And with a few people in the parking lot, sitting in their cars and trucks, drinking their coffee.

And so we do.  Working the truck and trailer back down to the frozen beach, we got it into position.  Trailer was just in the slush.  Truck rear wheels at the shore, on the crunchy sea ice.

As my father cranked out the line used to draw the bow up the trailer, I brought around the boat.  Three-foot waves of slush pushed the boat sideways to the shore while I was struggling to get it nose-on to the trailer.  I got it in position once, but the hook from the trailer line was cranking out too slowly and wasn’t long enough.

The boat swung around in the mean time, but I was able to get the hook on it.  Once I did, it would simply be a matter of lining up the boat with the trailer and draw it in.  Then we could get the hell off this beach before someone from the town came along and asked why we didn’t use the town landing instead.

With this in mind, I stepped further into the slush and maneuvered the stern.  Waves slopped up over and into the boat.  Slush at last started filling my boots.  I knew this would happen.  But we’d be on our way soon.

Slowly, the crank pulled the boat up.  My toes were getting very cold.  The wind tried to push the stern sideways.  I stepped further into the slush.  My toes were numb.  Slowly, the boat gained on the trailer.  I stepped out of the water, my boots filled to the tops with slush, and relieved my father from the cranking.  Closing the gap a few more feet, I locked the line into place.  Then I went to go empty my boots.

I could get the left one off by using the right boot.  A gallon of slush spilled onto the frozen sand.  I couldn’t feel anything in my left foot, so I could not use it to get off my right boot.  I couldn’t pull it off myself, so my father had to.  So I walked soaking sock-footed over to the passenger side and got into the truck.  I could feel every grain of sand and every shard of ice through my socks.

My father got in, started up the truck. Shifted into first.  Wheels turned.  Truck didn’t move.  Wheels turned.  Truck didn’t move.

He got out.  Looked at the wheels.  Came back.  Stuck.

I’ve never gotten stick in this truck.  It has four rear wheels.  I’ve driving in all kinds of mud in a stump dump with it.  But it couldn’t handle the high tide saturated sand and the weight of the boat on the trailer, and the sea slush.

Now, in broad daylight, weekday, noon, stuck on a town beach.  But my most immediate concern was my feet.  What I could feel, which was not much, was pain and stabbing cold.  Or stabbing pain and cold.  I had only risked the dousing of sea slush because I knew I’d be off the beach and home soon.  Now it was indefinite.

Then I saw Tim Wood, editor of the Cape Cod Chronicle, drive by. He didn’t seem to notice what was going on. He didn’t stop. He didn’t take a photo. He didn’t put it on the front page of the paper. So things were looking up.

Calling, I asked my mother to stop into my place and bring down a pair of socks and my hiking boots.  Then I called Matt Griffin to get ideas on who might have a truck to pull us out.  No answer.  He doesn’t leave his phone on at work.  So I called the head of the DPW.  He was in a meeting, but said yes we could call someone to get us off the beach, but no, a town vehicle couldn’t do it. We called my brother to see if he could find someone, and all this time I was gingerly pulling my two pairs of socks off my feet, rubbing my toes to get some feeling back in them (didn’t work) and finally putting the dry socks on. It took 10 minutes.

When I finally got my shoes on, I stepped out of the truck to see how deep the tires were.  Too deep. Halfway.  No getting out on our own.  We could drop the trailer there, and leave it until low tide.  Then the guy came up.

Cool guy.  Big guy.  Asked if we needed help.  I was walking back and forth in the sand, getting my circulation going, and said, yeah, yeah, we could.  While he brought his 4×4 truck down, I took a shovel from the truck and dug out the tires, both sides.

He hooked up a chain, my father got in the truck, started it, put it in first gear, and the tires just spun.  I told him to wait.  Then the tow started up, and he put in gear again.  Off they went.  Great.  Then the trailer went into the ditch the tires had dug.  And up out of the ditch and up into the parking lot.

His name was Craig, and he was working at a house nearby. Saw us on our lunch break.  Definitely came from somewhere off-Cape, outside of New England. More Appalachian, I’d say, from his accent.  Other guys in big trucks were still looking out their windows at us.  I yelled out, “Show’s OVER!”

Drove the truck back to West Chatham, where we left it, boat and trailer hooked up in the yard.  When I got back home, after checking in, I soaked in the tub for half an hour.  It took me two hours to get all the feeling back in my toes.  There were whole winters I’ve spent shellfishing, in waders, up to my chest in water.  But I’ve never felt this kind of permeating cold.

While it may have seemed stupid to have gone out on a day like today, I blame it all on the wrong gloves.  If had been able to hold onto those oars as I needed to start with, I could’ve stayed closer to shore.  Instead, I ended up with a tale of mid-winter recklessness so typical of the Cape.

Sofie’s still the one to turn off the television before me. Unless there’s something for supper she doesn’t want.

I will admit her watching has increased from a couple years ago. At six and a half, she deserves some indulgence in TV watching, especially on crummy, rainy, cold days. I was the same as a kid – probably more so – and how can I fault her tastes when she’s introduced me to the intellectual joys of SpongeBob Squarepants?

But then there are those weekend mornings. By this age she’s learned that she doesn’t need to wake me up as soon as she has, make her own breakfast and get started lazily with her day. Still, often in my early morning haze I don’t hear the television go on. I will hear talking. That might sound a little funny in a household consisting entirely of a single parent (sleeping) and a single child (awake).

When I do emerge from my slumber, quietly so as to not disturb her, I’ll find one of two things: my daughter reading out loud from a book, or her drawing while speaking out the dialogue out the characters in her story.

That’s always preferable to the dreaded Hannah Montana phenomenon. I’ve been able to resist this, mostly, by making it clear that I really do not like this pre-packaged commercial Disney Girl-of-the-Moment. That this star will disappear, mostly likely, as soon as she ages out of her series is a concept I’ve introduced with mixed results to Sofie. This is a cultural force, I understand, and one that, outside of the US, cannot be avoided by a girl between the ages of 4 and 14.

I’ll admit there’s one advantage to television over artwork or reading. Watching TV, by itself, is clean. It does not spread books all over the couch and floor, pencils, pens, papers, scissors and little tidbits of clipped something-or-others onto the kitchen counters and beyond.

With the attendant cleanup that I, as parent, demand of her following all sorts of non-television-oriented activity, I can only be happy that she hasn’t seen the perverse logic. TV = no cleanup. Or maybe she just doesn’t like television that much.

I’m trying to figure out how we got here, to this point of non-infatuation with television. Maybe that’s a backward way to see it. Perhaps, television is less a priority than other more intellectually stimulating activities. Regardless, I’m trying to figure out what I may have done right.

It’s not like she hasn’t watched television from an early age. On the contrary, “Mary Poppins” was part of her morning routine. After breakfast and changing, I’d park her on the couch and put that one movie on. Every morning, the same movie. And she’d fall asleep watching, while I could get some work done.

Was it reading “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” every night before bedtime? She never really cared for “Goodnight Moon,” so maybe that should have been the tipoff. Nursery rhymes were OK, but this girl’s always wanted a plot.

Could it be her bilingualism, and having grown up in Germany and the U.S., with both languages? Joseph Conrad came to Britain from Poland, speaking little English, and he seemed to have developed some gift for creativity, some say. Maybe it is using different parts of the brain that does it. Television does seem to command attention completely, and especially one part of the brain – the TV-watching part.

Of all things, however, it may come down to something as superficial as different tastes in television. We just don’t watch the same things, and we’ve pretty much segregated our watching. When I watch, it’s on the set in my bedroom. For her, it’s the living room. She enjoys endless re-runs of her kids shows. I like endless reruns of more sophisticated programs. Like “Star Trek.”

So with such incompatibility in viewing, why watch alone when you there are other pursuits that can be done alone? Reading. Drawing. There is a tangible sense of accomplishment with either. A book can be held up – I read this. A drawing can be put on the wall – I drew this. Can’t do that with a TV show.

Maybe it is that simple. Or maybe a combination of everything, along with some random genetic variations. Whatever the reason, there’s a great disincentive to upgrade to a flat screen HD television. Smarter to spend the money on books, crayons, scissors, construction paper, and definitely a new vacuum.

There’s a conversation that continues to come back to me, nine years after it took place in the downstairs meeting room of the Chatham Town Offices.

The topic up for discussion was vehicle passage on North Beach. At the time, the beach was, of course, still a peninsula. The thread of barrier beach attached to Orleans by which the few lucky camp owners and ORV drivers would access the Chatham section had problems – exactly where the vehicles should actually pass through here. Some camp owners felt the traffic was eroding dune protecting their homes. Federal and local officials felt otherwise.

As a Selectman, I took a fairly traditional view. No, a primitive view, really – screw the cars, and take a boat or walk. But, having grown up on the Nantucket Sound side of town, I never developed an appreciation or familiarity with life out on North Beach. I did understand the need for camp owners to get quickly out to their properties when weather conditions made boat access impossible.

I think about this Selectmen’s meeting now, especially in light of the newest chapter in the South Beach saga. Namely, that two property owners south of the Lighthouse are now claiming property rights out to Chatham Harbor, and thereby ownership of swathes of Lighthouse Beach. In interrupting the town’s contiguous rights from Lighthouse Beach out to South Beach, this claim would effectively be a roadblock in the middle of what has been viewed for 18 years as one public property.

One the one hand, this certainly solves the whole safe-or-not to swim issue here. Or greatly diminishes it. The town won’t have to agonize over how much to pay for patrols this summer for a beach no one can get to.

On the other, it raises almost quite literally a roadblock to any question of vehicular access to South Beach. Recall that in the bitterly cold winters of the past few years, commercial shellfishermen, frozen out of all the harbors, have been granted permission to drive down the beach to access the waters nearby.

That suggestion, however, triggered my memory of that Selectmen’s meeting. Camp owner Russell Broad was proposing an alternative route for summer traffic on North Beach. Effectively, his front yard was right up against the backside of the beach, right on Chatham Harbor. His grandchildren would play in the close-by intertidal zone, but trucks would come whizzing down on the wet sand at high speeds. In effect, at low tide, there was a very broad highway in front of his camp. As the tide came up, the road narrowed bringing the speeders closer and closer to his house, and closer and closer to his family.

Yet, this was his property. Why should he have to put up with this? Would anyone put up with people driving through their yard just because it was the easiest route?

Town Counsel Bruce Gilmore, present at the meeting, pointed out the Massachusetts Colonial Ordinance that passage through the intertidal zone was open to the public for purposes of fishing, fowling and navigation. Therefore, he continued, all one of those trucks and SUV’s would need to do was put a fishing rod or clam rake in the back, and voila! The intent of the law is fulfilled.

If that were the case, I pointed out, how long would the Town stand aside if the same thing happened down along the shores of the Mill Pond? It would be as equally true for Hardings Beach, too (not well known, but from the entrance of Hardings to the immediate shoreline is actually a town landing). Would fishermen be able to drive anywhere along the shore in Chatham as long as they had a defensible excuse like a rod,, rake or shotgun? But while this was a valid question, it was not one that anyone cared to entertain at the time.

Perhaps now is the time to revisit it.

There is a town landing that runs from Morris Island Road, south along the Chatham Beach and Tennis Club, to the harbor.

And as for where the intertidal zone is on Lighthouse Beach and South Beach, well, having filmed down there during the hurricanes of this summer and documented the storm surge, it’s pretty clear this is most of the area the public uses anyway.

That leaves very little stable ground upon which to erect a roadblock.

A long haul, but worth it. TACV, the Cape Verde national airlines, is the only airline flying direct to Fogoin the  Cape Verde from Boston. All others, costing at least half again more, run via European cities like Portugal. The drawback, though, is the limited twice-weekly schedule. Tuesdays and Fridays only. So it was either go for a week, or for two to three days.

But for us at Hit and Run History to follow the Columbia Expedition as it made its first stop on its first-ever American voyage ‘round the world, it meant not only coming to the capital city of Praia. It also meant taking a side-trip to the neighboring island of Maio. The ferry schedule being what it is, we had to take a week. So back in September, it looked best to head out on the second weekend in November.

It was less than two weeks ago we learned of the dengue fever outbreak and epidemic in Cape Verde. Unknown in the islands before November, it was allowed to spread before anyone recognized the illness in the wake of the only two rainy months of the year – September and October.

A national effort to eradicate the disease, led by the prime minister, was recently reported here on Cape Cod Today. The mosquitoes spreading the disease in this dry country became public enemy number one. Still, by Friday the 13th – the day we left Boston – the island nation reported over 12,000 infected, six dead.

It was only through information posted to the Hit and Run History fan page on Facebook that we learned of the relief efforts of the Brockton Neighborhood Health Center. Things we take for granted, like Vitamin C, mosquito repellant, acetaminophen, and hand sanitizing gel – all needed to fight infection and the effects of dengue – were practically non-existent in Cape Verde.

Knowing we were determined to go, Hit and Run History offered to help in any way we could. A crew member having previously dropped out, so we were able to work with TACV to offer that ticket to Luisa Schaeffer, the outreach worker coordinating the relief effort in Brockton, who not coincidentally happened to be a native of the Cape Verde island of Fogo.

Upon our arrival at Logan Airport on Friday evening, we quickly saw that our fellow travelers were bringing their own supplies. Checked baggage pushed the limit of two 50-pound bags. FAA regulations were also restricting the amount of aerosol spray to two cans. Subsequently, there has been a run on repellant wipes and lotion in this New England November.

Luisa was able to use her checked baggage allotment to bring over more supplies, destined for the hospital in Fogo. Now we are in Fogo, having brought more supplies over from the capital of Praia, where we landed Saturday morning. We will have the chance to speak with the doctors there, and see how the supplies are being used.

Initial word is that 16 children are sick here, but countless more adults are overwhelming the hospital. While this island is clearly dry even following t

he rainy season, many mosquitoes have found places to thrive. The first line of defense – DEET-based spray – is our constant companion.