Lighthouse Beach - Cape Cod

“When I came here 2 years ago there was a sand bar that jutted out into the ocean.” “sure” k says. “It was a foggy morning. I swear. I remember the water came up on both sides of the sandbar till the bar tapered to a point in the middle of the ocean. Fishing boats looked like Japanese warships cloaked in fog” Now, I found no trace of that path. Either my memory loss was accelerating or the waves were playing tricks and rearranging the sands while I was gone.

Beaches are dynamic. Spend a few moments at the beach and you can see the sand being blown up by the wind, or rolled in and out by the waves, or swept grain by grain by the tips of dune grass, or shoveled by kids in a plastic pail. Spend a week, you can see the tides rise and fall hiding, obscuring, and moving sand bars. Spend a few years and you will notice how the dunes grow, shift and migrate like a sandy amoeba. Lighthouse beach used to have a coastal barrier beach protect it until the hurricane of 1987 split the barrier beach and formed an inlet. Within this inlet, the water swirled and conspired to pushe the sandbars in different trajectories to deceive my memories.

There’s a marsh which forms a cove at the end of Lighthouse beach. K followed me through the marsh to a certain point. The tide created strange ripples in the multi-colored sand. At low tide, the actions of these tides were laid bare in abstract geometries. We came to cape cod to see if we could make new memories. To see where we would go with our lives. I began thinking we are like the shifting sands of the beach. Continually evolving and moving based on the waves of experiences.

Water flowing from channels to the ocean blocked our path. I leapt over the water. “Chicken!” I declared. ”Just jump.” I took a picture of her and taunted her. The tassels of K’s hat blew in the wind as she contemplated following me. She stood on the embankment safely. She couldn’t believe I was challenging her. When she finally did leap she got a little wet. “my wet chicken” I thought. We traversed through the back lots of an apartment complex down through the desolate alleys and to the parking lot. In the back streets, the white sands blown in from the beach looked like sprinkled snow giving the neighborhood a Christmas-like feeling.

Back at the parking lot, the sunset broke behind the lighthouse orange and red. When sam nye was appointed by Thomas Jefferson to keep the lighthouse it was fueled by lard. Back then, the light saved the sailors from the ghost who they believed to ride a light-colored horse on stormy nights, luring sailors into dangerous shoals and their watery graves.

2 years ago

2 years ago

2 years ago

2 years ago

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