Yee Haw

I had two “A Cape Cod Notebook” pieces up on WCAI in March. If you didn’t get a chance to listen on-air, here is where the pieces live on line:

A Sandy, Shifting Place  This one’s a little look at the island’s stones and why it is seemingly all sand now.

The Gift That Ride in the Waves This is a piece that I am particularly proud of, as I was able to finally give voice to some of the…what  I am calling “coastal anxiety” that weighs on me when it comes to sea level rise and these places I love.

It’s raining and windy today, we’re getting the outer bands of whatever storm is working its way up the coast. All the boats have been canceled this morning. I hope yours is a good day, wherever you are.

Hey Friends,

I know it’s March now, and we are just three months away from June which is making me giddy to think about. Longer days mean more time to be outside, and more time to walk.

Here’s a piece I wrote and recorded about the seals at Great Point. Longtime (ha) listeners may remember I attempted to walk to GP twice and failed. I finally hitched a ride. 

The other piece I had on air in February is one about wind. The wind and weather out here just shapes every part of life. I’ve started to wonder if the wind isn’t changing me, too.

Did you miss my most recent A Cape Cod Notebook  about house moving on Nantucket? Fear not! You can click on over to WCAI right now and listen: http://www.capeandislands.org/post/nantucket-dream-home.

I’ll also be on next Tuesday, February 5th.

And, if you are on Nantucket, you should come to WCAI night at the Culinary Center on Wednesday, February 6th! You can sign up here and get a free ticket.  It’s sure to be a great time, and it’s always fun to put a face to the voices you hear on your radio.

See you there!

Did you miss yesterday’s installment of “A Cape Cod Notebook”? You can click on over to WCAI to listen/read my latest essay all about an attempted hike to Great Point Light. I am lighthouse obsessed these days and thought a lot about the characters in my novel while walking through the sand.

Thanks to all who have offered to drive me out to Great Point after this aired!! 🙂

Greetings, all,

If you missed last week’s “A Cape Cod Notebook,” you can click over to WCAI and listen online here: http://www.capeandislands.org/post/now-season-night-walking. This essay is about seeing the island shrouded in darkness, now that the sun sets at 4:15 in the afternoon.

Hope you are able to get outside this week for a walk!

 

Do you use photos to help you with your writing? I took photo classes in high school, mainly because the teacher was so cool and it was an hour I could spend in a darkroom listening to The Doors and Led Zeppelin (yes, I am a throwback through-and-through). Now that DSLRs are so ubiquitous, everyone can be a good photographer with little effort, I like taking pictures here and there but would not call myself a photographer in the way I know in my bones I am a writer.

I write about very real places–virtually everything I write is either set on the Outer Cape or Nantucket. I have a map of Provincetown in my head from my 20+ years living there, and the last 7 of visiting as much as I can. But sometimes I still have to look things up in Google maps, or on Building Provincetown, one of my favorite resources.

If I’m lucky, looking at these pictures can help me feel exactly what it was like to be standing where I was when I took the photo.

 

I realize, too, that so much of my writing is influenced by the natural world. My pieces for A Cape Cod Notebook, of course, are all about snippets of life here in strange sandy places.

My most recent manuscript, about people living in the Long Point settlement in the 1850s and in Provincetown in 2018, considers the natural world quite a bit. In the 1850s, the Long Point settlement was abandoned because it stopped being lucrative to live so close to the fishing grounds, then exhausted. There’s a line where a character wishes there was some sort of market for sand–as sand is the only natural resource there is on Long Point. In the present day, the novel opens with a storm and a giant summer home sliding into the sea. The bluff edge it had been sitting on had eroded. Now there is a very real market for sand, a dwindling resource in some places, and out here on Nantucket it’s trucked in to protect the bluff.

My characters walk long distances over the sand, as they are lifesavers–people who rescue shipwrecked sailors. There is a physicality to walking through the sand that cannot be gained from looking at a picture of a sandy trail. I walk in the sand a lot, and try to use these muscle memories to influence my writing.

Have you listened to A Cape Cod Notebook yet this week? Click on over to WCAI (http://www.capeandislands.org/post/last-swim) to hear and read my newest essay, “Last Swim.” I think the long title would be “Last Swim, or: The End of Something.”

Two truths: 1) I never care about my lawn to begin with. 2) I still haven’t taken my bathing suit out of my car. (I did run out of oil last week, but that’s another story.)

You can also read about the origins of A Cape Cod Notebook and learn more about me and the gents I share the airwaves with over on WGBH’s website this month. Or you can read it excerpted here…I took that picture on the first afternoon I stayed at the Fowler Shack in the dunes, just over a year ago.

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s a piece that was on WCAI last week I wrote and recorded about my week on Beach Point.

http://www.capeandislands.org/post/october-days-and-slowing-down

If you are a WGBH or WCAI member, you’ll see me in the November Explore guide that should already be in your mailboxes. I’ll post it here when it goes online.

Is anyone else already planning their 2019 vacations? I am.

 

 

 

Here in Truro until Saturday. Losing my mind over Beach Point. More photos to come.

In the mean time, be sure to click over to WCAI to listen to my newest Cape Cod Notebook: http://www.capeandislands.org/post/golden-hour-madaket.

I’m late in posting my essay for A Cape Cod Notebook than ran on 11 September 18, but if you missed it, click over to listen. I’m particularly fond of this one, and it was this trip to Long Point that inspired the project I’m working on now.

Listen/read here: http://www.capeandislands.org/post/all-washes-ashore.