Little Bang Theory

Manchester By The Sea. July 26, 2009

Cape Cod Bay is framed by two really different geological features.  South of Boston, the great sweeping dune-scape of Cape Cod proper arcs out into the North Atlantic, its shifting sands increasingly impermanent as the bulk of Boston recedes into a backward glance.

North of Boston it’s a different story.  Here the ancestral highlands meet the sea in proud swells on a peninsula of pink granite, evocative of the best of Maine’s coast.

This is the part of Massachusett’s coast which intrigues me the most.  I try to get there once or twice a year, preferably in the warmer months, as I’m a pansy when it comes to swimming in freezing water.  And if I’m going to drive three hours each way, I’d like to actually, um, go swimming.

So this past weekend Slim and I made the pilgramage to Manchester By The Sea, a lovely little tourist trap with upscale shops, a beautiful beach of silky sand stretching between promontories of pink permanence, and on this particular weekend, an Arts Festival which had the place hopping and the parking lots pretty full.

But once the logistical difficulties were surmounted, the result was just as I remembered it – a beautiful beach, peopled but not crowded:

Slim was game to explore the interface of sand and stone, where the shore line broke off into the kind of scene which made me reach for my camera.  At the southern end of the beach an island populated only by gulls framed the scene:

…while to the north, a promontory of granite marked the pasage of innumerable sailboats in this blue-blood paradise:

After a month of mostly rain, the weather was perfect and we had a lovely day, feeding each other sashimi as jealous gulls hovered overhead.

I could learn to like that.  😉