Took a break from the usual last night and visited the Long Pasture Wildlife Sanctuary in Cummaquid for an evening beach walk to look for horseshoe crabs. The sharp-eyed Audubon naturalist spotted three of them while the rest of us settled for green and hermit crab sightings.
We learned that the Sandy Neck lighthouse wasn’t in fact built inland, but that the spit has grown through the years; must be one of the few places on the Cape that is actually gaining rather than losing land.
For the first time ever, I saw the tide creep in over the north side flats, spreading slowly toward the shore like the runoff from watering your lawn. The south side beaches don’t have the same topography, nor do they have the spectacular sunset views.
It was a perfect night, and I was lucky enough to get back to Mashpee in time to catch most of the fireworks display at New Seabury. I’d been told this is a private event, but the roads weren’t blocked off. Several dozen of us were parked at a meadow with a decent view of the display and an easy in/easy out with no crowds to fight with.
The cicadas are pretty much finished, considerate to the end, having emerged after Memorial Day and ended before Fourth of July, they didn’t interfere with the tourist season.
Everything that marks the passage of time has a particular poignancy these days, the cicadas’ brief little lives being no exception. They were not the marauding monsters we were told to expect but, rather, a unique natural event. In a way, we were fortunate to get to see them.