“It all began the day I learned that from my window I could only see a piece of sky. I stepped outside and looked around. I never dreamed it was so high or even half as wide.” ~ Yentl Driving home from my Cape Cod vacation, I was really amazed by the sky. It poured rain as I ate my farewell breakfast at the inn, but lightened up long enough to take one last walk on the beach. For old time’s sake, I went to Paine’s Creek Beach. (Nauset was too far in the other direction and under the still-threatening…

For those of you who have never vacationed on Cape Cod, I thought I’d share a little advice about how to make a Cape vacation fabulous. A place to stay… I’ve stayed with the same innkeepers every time I’ve come to the Cape, and I am not the least bit hesitant to recommend Brewster by the Sea or the Captain Freeman Inn as hands-down the best places to make your home away from home. Not only are the rooms spacious and wonderfully decorated, the common areas and grounds provide lots of options for hanging out, reading, and relaxing. (And swimming if…

As you might guess, I really love walking… it energizes my body and clears my head. There’s something very optimistic about walking; it makes you feel like you’re going somewhere, even if it’s just a walk on a beach. Seen on the road to the beach…    A fall display, seasonal berries, and a graveyard gate dated 1700. Gray, drizzly, perfect morning beach walk.    One of the books I picked up to read this week was Richard Paul Evans’ Milles to Go. It was a sappy read, but at least not predictable. The main character, Chris, lost everything – his wife died…

I learned a few things today… 1) There really is water in the Cape Cod Bay. 2) When you take a long walk on an unfamiliar beach, it’s best to start by looking back to identify the landmarks for where you started. 3) Weather forecasters are just as frequently wrong here as they are at home. It was supposed to be a changeover day… nice in the morning, but clouding up by mid-day. My original plan was to walk Breakwater Beach after breakfast, then go into Chatham for some window shopping, then wind up back reading by the pool for…

I’ve been reading this interesting memoir, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair by Nina Sankovetch. In an attempt to reclaim her joy in life after her sister’s death, Sankovetch decided to read a book a day for a year – hoping to find solace and direction. “Books. The more I thought about how to stop and get myself back together as one sane, whole person, the more I thought about books. I thought about escape. Not running to escape but reading to escape. Cyril Connolly, twentieth-century writer and critic, wrote that “words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.”…

What is it about taking a long drive that really makes it feel like you are on vacation? I’ve actually been on vacation since Thursday, but the last four days were filled with errands and chores and typical weekend activities rather than vacation fare. Now that I have traveled over 400 miles, I truly feel away from it all. The drive up was lovely – easy driving, variably sunny day, great music. Once you get into New England, the road seems a little like a highway to heaven… trees on both sides of the highway, and glimpses of rivers and…