Picnics on the Edge of the World
The outer Cape feels a wild place. There’s a distinct charm to its town nomenclature: Wellfleet with its saltmarshes, Provincetown with its dune shacks, Orleans, where the sun rises and sets over the sea. These places seem suitable to set a fairytale, more than Chelmsford or Lakeville or Lee. Beware the coyotes of Truro, I once heard in a local news report. Doesn’t that sentence raise a delicious thrill?
We booked a Gothic Cottage on Provincetown’s old drag. It stood there, in miniature, in the shadow of the old house, a bigger version of itself. Our host explained that the builder, a sea captain, needed a standalone structure to experiment with oil refinements. With its vaulted windows and wood filigrees, I thought it must be the fanciest laboratory of the whaling age. Outside, the flowers grew in a chorus of color. Our host said modestly that the growing season had just begun.
Determined to keep to ourselves, we split our time between the cottage and the wild. We hungered wildlife and we had our fill of it. We took a walk on the beach but were turned about by dive-bombing terns as we approached their nesting sites. We glimpsed a half dozen seals and tried unsuccessfully to follow them down the shoreline. Once, we braked to avoid a snake as it sashayed across the road. Twice, we slowed down for fox pups, chasing and tumbling over one another on the dunes. And yes, when night fell in Truro, we stared down the shadowy specter of a coyote, eyes gleaming gold in the headlights.
It was hard to reckon with the town's emptiness. Not that we expected the exuberant crush of a high-season holiday weekend, but the pandemic coupled with a cold, persistent cloud bank to keep people inside. I wanted to dine beachside, fog bank be damned, so we bundled ourselves in sweatshirts and blankets and called Captain Marsen’s for a clambake to go. The parking lot at Race Point Beach was deserted, save for a few stalwart campers who’d already returned to their vans. We felt like ghosts as we cut through the mist. Down the boardwalk, along the shore, not another soul in our sight. Just curve of the cape and the point where it disappeared into the engulfing gray. Matt kept his head on a swivel, wary of great whites and coyotes (did he secretly hope to see one?) but I had eyes only for the lobster.
For more pictures, see our gallery Pandemic-era Provincetown.
