Daphne and I camped out last night, beachside, at the prettiest spot in Cotuit. Tent, air mattresses, sleeping bags, Coleman lantern, campfire. The whole deal. We went to sleep, or tried to go to sleep to the sound of crashing surf, but …
…We brought the dog. The dog, who is smaller than a cat, was in a complete and utter frenzy of outdoors paranoia, running laps around the tent until 5 am when it finally collapsed in a ball on my head. The dog is now banned from future camping expeditions. It may be cute, but it lives on a couch from now on, not a tent. It’s also a perfect coyote snack. Live and learn.
Yesterday was the last skiff race of the season, I sat it out and watched it from the beach, not wanted to wallow in a sea of poignancy as the summer winds to an end. As a townie I get to keep my boat in the water for another month, but reality says I’ll only use it one or two more times and lose sleep over it when I am in North Carolina and start tracking the September hurricanes with the obsession of someone who lives in a place overdue for a Big One.
As sailing ends, fly fishing takes over. These are the days when it sucks to be bait, as the gamefish ferociously feed on the juvenile herring and menhaden before making their southern migration in late October. Big balls of bait get corralled off the beaches, and the feeding frenzies are a sight to behold. So yesterday morning I cleaned my reel, sorted out my gear, and got ready for a month of fishy weekends. I tried to cast at some false
albacore running off of Osterville, but they were skittish and mixed in with pesky adolescent bluefish, so I worked on my casting and my sunburn and enjoyed an hour of solitude before returning to the beach to watch the final parade of skiffs and the twilight of the summer.
