Whether Report (April, 1980)
I overheard the weather report late last night, which, down the Cape, can be the biggest news of the day: a warning of extremely high tides couched in the scientific terms of syzygy and proxigean spring tides. Instinctively, before the switch of logic or reason is thrown, I plan to pack some things and take the drive of some one hundred and twenty miles to North Truro. Afraid for the beach house the folks bought for a relative song back in the Sixties, I want to tie a rope (at least) to the nearest telephone pole from the house so it won’t float very far…. Jesus, that’s silly, I reason finally. An excuse? A premonition? No. Really it’s just silly. The house hasn’t budged an inch off its pilings since it was moved from Provincetown in ’23 (we figure). The notched and pegged roof beams bespeak the work of shipwrights, not carpenters, as though the house was intended to, and actually does, sway in high winds. It may have sunk and sagged somewhat with age, time and lots of use – like an old shoe – but it rests not precariously at all on sturdy, low pilings – and the new sea wall built last year (at great expense) is better than insurance any day – a visible bastion against the timeless brute force of the sea. But even the bay side can be moody and indifferent. We can infringe for awhile upon its boundaries – push it back, fill it in, build sea walls, breakwaters, and board up the windows. The sea has time, and many more moons and tides, and allows us mortals in our endless war against the natural order to win our little battles, our small brief victories. Defeat is always just one storm away. Besides, that’s the risk one takes, the price one might have to pay for buying a beach house right on the bay. (But perhaps I should drive down anyway….)
By Mark S. Foley
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