Time marches on. “Still round the corner there may wait, a new road, or a secret gate,” said J. R. R. Tolkien. The beach is deserted. Sweeping views of choppy surf, sand and rocky terrain reveal neither man nor beast. It is a blank slate lying fallow and forgotten on the first day of 2012. Shortly, it will wear its winter wardrobe of snow and ice, and arctic winds will blow. Yet nothing compares with a sunset over a world of white. Next summer, cars, trucks and trailers will cover this horseshoe-shaped cove, and the shack will be open for beach passes. Boaters towing trailers will wait their …
It is a New England Christmas. All is calm. All is bright. The Sakonnet is tranquil stretching in a blanket of blue to Middletown, Newport and beyond. An old English Christmas carol comes to mind. “I saw three ships come sailing in / On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day; I saw three ships come sailing in / On Christmas Day in the morning.” There is not a boat in sight, but I imagine three. “The Virgin Mary and Christ were there, / On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day; / The Virgin Mary and Christ were there, / On Christmas Day in the morning.” The Gospel according to Luke tells us: “And it came …
A man parks his car at the beach, opens the door and two large fluffy dogs exit. Unleashed, they bound over the open sand, tasting their freedom. I am here for the same reason. It is an unseasonably warm, windless December morning. The Sakonnet is as calm as a mountain lake, not a ripple graces its surface. As I adjust to the tranquility around me, I feel the strain of the past week lessen its hold, and I begin to ponder. There are so many wonderful things to experience during the holiday season. But like the contents of Santa’s sack, the trappings of an American Christmas can be a mixed bag…
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. “I feel the influence of the season beaming into my soul from the happy looks around me,” said historian Washington Irving. “Surely happiness is reflective, like the light of heaven; and every countenance bright with smiles, and glowing with innocent enjoyment, is a mirror transmitting to others the rays of a supreme and everlasting benevolence.” Last week, we took a wrong turn on the way to the Tiverton Tree Lighting Celebration. Driving along Highland Road in front of the Essex Library, I happened to glance down Middle Avenue and spotted four men…
Most people would not associate Christmas with a day at the beach, but we do. One sure sign of Christmas in our neck of the woods is the opening of the Ferolbink Tree Farm on Fogland Road, overlooking the Sakonnet River. A few months ago, vehicles transported swimmers along this street to Fogland State Beach, but now those same cars and SUVs stop at the farm and soon sport a colorful holiday accessory, a tree tied to their roof. All I have to do is breathe in the scent of pine, and my mind is flooded with images of Christmases past, especially the annual trek to find the perfect tree. Braving…
The truck bounces over the well-grooved, sandy pathway to the cove. On this raw November day, I find refuge in the deserted inlet, framed by leafless trees hugging the coastline and the golden-hued grasses of the salt marsh. Shutting off the engine, I do what writers do best: I stare. “If staring ever becomes an Olympic event, I’ll be bringing home the gold,” writes New York Times best-selling author Ann Patchett in her little book, “What now?” “While other people go to work, I stare out the window. I stare at my dog. I stare at blank pieces of paper and paragraphs and single sentences and a …
My husband drives our little car over the pebbled beach, and we park behind the weathered picnic table. Fogland State Beach is empty except for a lone sailboat drifting aimlessly on its mooring. Scanning the horseshoe-shaped cove, I spy a couple of vehicles in the distance dotting the sand. Now we have Fogland all to ourselves. Yet I cannot help but feel sadness for those who have gone away. They think of this place as a summer resort and are counting the days until their return. But they miss so much in the interim. Late autumn is far from dreary for us. The author of over 50 books, …
It is the end of October, and my family and I are forced to face the inevitable: It is time to close up the summer house for another season. Our sweatshirts are no longer ample protection from the cold winds, and we linger a few minutes at the beach before returning to the warmth of the house. On Sunday afternoons we remain inside watching the Patriots’ play, rather than sunning ourselves in the back yard. Then the day comes when my husband and his friend winterize the house, draining the water from the pipes to prevent freezing. The season of sunny summer days and simple pleasures officially…
Looking back as far as my childhood days, I cannot recall an October at Fogland as warm as this one.A meteorological phenomenon, an Indian summer is a period of warm or mild weather between September and November. It can also refer to a happy or flourishing period occurring toward the end of something. “The Indian summer of life should be a little sunny and a little sad, like the season, and infinite in wealth and depth of tone, but never hustled,” said historian Henry Adams. In 80-degree weather, my husband loads our 1970 John Deere riding lawnmower onto the trailer, and we truck it to the …
The Boys of Summer are always welcome at our weekend gatherings in Fogland, and this year was no exception. We jeered in the spring, rejoiced in the summer, and jeered more loudly this September; but just like the rest of embittered Red Sox Nation, we still love the home team. On sunny afternoons at the summer house, you can always count on baseball. Sometimes we are the players wielding a yellow plastic bat and smacking the wiffle ball over our neighbor’s fence. But most times we hover around the TV, providing as colorful commentary as Don Orsillo and Jerry Remy. It is our tradition to walk …
It’s hard to believe that it has only been a month since Hurricane Irene came up the coastline. I still cringe when I reread the notice posted on the door of the summer house: “Due to the impending hurricane expected to hit Tiverton, and the high winds and probable high tidal surge associated with the hurricane, the Town of Tiverton has issued a mandatory evacuation starting at 6 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 27, 2011 for all residents who live in mobile home parks and low lying areas (close to the water) in town. The Town of Tiverton will have a staffed shelter in the Tiverton Middle School located…
There is a change in the air at the summer house. The sky is an intense blue, the sun warm on my shoulders, and the cool breeze oh so pleasant; but they signal the approach to the end of the season and prelude to winter. “Summer’s lease hath all too short a date,” wrote William Shakespeare in Sonnet 18. My sentiments exactly. Gladys Taber chronicled the passing of the season from the perch of her pre-Colonial farmhouse in rural Connecticut. “I know fall is here, although the world is still green with summer,” she said. “And I feel an urgency to gather in all the loveliness of the past blazing…
I remember in surreal detail that Tuesday morning ten years ago. While driving to my job at a daily newspaper, I listened to the breaking news story on the radio: Two commercial passenger jets hijacked from Logan had just struck the World Trade Center. America was under attack. When I arrived in the Newsroom, the reporters were gathered around the televisions, and I joined them. We saw Manhattan burning, the Twin Towers reduced to rubble, thousands of people running through smoke-filled streets. A third jet hit the Pentagon, and a fourth plane heading for Washington crashed in a Pennsylvania …
I will always remember the sounds and the silence. While I write this, the loud, incessant, monotonous drone of the generator is music to my ears, rather than Pandora’s classical strains playing on my battery-powered laptop. It is Day 3 without power in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene’s fury. Last Saturday with heavy hearts, my husband and I were at Fogland, anchoring our boat to the summer house and securing all my parents’ belongings. Some of our neighbors had boarded up their windows, and most of the residents had already evacuated. When we drove away, we understood the very real …
It is the last weekend before the unofficial end of summer, and it is bittersweet. A day before the arrival of Hurricane Irene, we are planning to drive to Fogland to secure the summer house and boat the best we can and to flip the picnic table. My parents were there yesterday, and my mother left in tears. Scripture tells us in Ecclesiastes 3: “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and…
Weeding out the bookshelves in my basement the other day, I found the old, dog-eared paperback of “The Sea Around Us” by Rachel L. Carson. I still remember the day I bought it at a book sale in my high school library – the imprint Joseph Case High School stamped inside the back cover. When I opened the book, I understood why long ago I had exchanged my lunch money for a science book, rather than the usual literature titles that would attract a future English major. The introduction captivated me: “The enigmatic ocean-mother has always fascinated poets; here an eminent scientist presents a …
July was a glorious month filled with long sunny weekends at the summer house. Consequently, I clocked miles on the beach, read countless books and magazines under a shady tree, and played like a child. Living in a cabin for two years, two months and two days that he built himself on Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau wrote, “For I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly.” Ah, my July was like that. But then August rolls in, and the first Sunday of the month is stormy. The heavens open and release its stores in sheets of unrelenting rain. After church…
Water covers 70 percent of the Earth’s surface and is vital for life. In the poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” the lyrical verse chants: “Water, water, everywhere, / Nor any drop to drink.” Jutting out into the river, our slice of heaven at Fogland is a peninsula with the swirling Sakonnet on two sides and the brackish water of the salt marsh on the other. Oftentimes, the air is heavy with moisture – the mist and fog so thick that it is a palpable thing, the water enveloping us like our first nine months of life afloat in amniotic fluid. Yet, in this community of cottages, water …
Last week I did the unthinkable. I unplugged from technology for five days. During my last vacation, I found myself answering emails, making calls, looking for story ideas, scheduling appointments and writing. I knew that the only way to distance myself from my work would be to disconnect altogether. This vacation would be different. My laptop lay lifeless on my desk, a shiny, black, unopened box, along with the cell phone silenced nearby. With no email, Google, Facebook, Twitter and text messages at my fingertips, I literally dropped off the planet. I was unreachable. Unable to respond to …
