Seduction of a Soul: Home on Cape Cod

(Cape Cod Times op ed page 9/10/83--still true in 2010)

     Home is where the soul settles down, unwinds, and seeps into the gritty earth, creating the strongest kind of roots—spiritual ones. Home is always as much an interior place as it is an outside space.
     My home is Cape Cod, a place unique because of its inherent schizophrenia. A lure to tourists for generations, this patch of land bills itself as paradise, but many visitors see only those pockets of commercialism that both sustain and repulse the locals. “The season” feeds us and we know it, though we grow cranky as the traffic builds and the accents change in the markets and in the mall. This love-hate conflict extends to our relationship with the Cape itself. We struggle to cope with a manic summer pace alternating with the painful isolation imposed by winter’s chill.
     It is in the midst of this confused identity, however, that Cape Cod’s seduction of my soul continues. Newly arrived (as New Englanders measure time) I discover that a part of me has been here always. That part of me that has always stretched itself against sea and sky wallows in the natural tapestry surrounding me. Against it I measure my growth and my limits, and rediscover both awe and solitude.
     Alone, walking pensively, I wonder what it is about this spit of land that creates so strong a spell. Why does each salt marsh suddenly seem a puzzle made for my unraveling? Will clouds ever look quite this spectacular again? And when did I first notice that flat, foggy days have a chill magic all their own?
     I drive pensively too, over narrow, winding roads. There are places here where man’s hand on the land has been gentle, where some colonial forebear built as if house and land were spiritually married. And now there also grow newer versions, tributes to someone’s reverence for the old sensible design joined to modern sensitivity. We’ve finally discovered the energy efficiency of Cape and salt-box style homes. Why ever did it take so long?
     Finally I ponder creativity—in nature, in others, and in me. Cape Cod calls it forth in periodic bursts among us all. I know of almost no one here--doctor, teacher, disc jockey, or laborer—who does not paint or build, photograph or make music, write, act, or dance. Perhaps it is something in the salty air, for the light and wind also seem to pass their artistic brushes across the landscape, creating constantly new shapes, new images, new vistas. It doesn’t take much effort to be inspired here, inspired to share the insights unfurled in moments of silent wonder.
     I write this now to share my vision. And to explain why one child of metropolitan asphalt and suburban split-levels will always call Cape Cod home.