Nick Woodland 8/15/2023
Our time in Mass was a whirlwind. We moved from one place to the next and stayed in four different homes! A big thanks goes out to all those who put us up during that time. My Mom and Dad graciously offered to have the girls overnight at their place so Wendy and I could have a night together. But the two of us realized all we wanted to do was go to bed! Unfortunately it was so hot and humid that we had the A/C thrumming away all night and couldn’t sleep because the thing sounds like a jet engine.
The drives from Watkins Glen to Pattersonville and then from there to Littleton, MA were very tiring. Heavy rain through the Susquehanna Valley required intense concentration and then tight roads in Mass had me on edge. I woke the following morning like a zombie, unable to focus and feeling like I could just sit and stare at a wall all day.
It was a little tricky staying in Littleton and visiting with others in Concord. We basically did not spend any time at camp and often forget items but it was too far to go back to camp to get them. The campground actually re-assigned us to a crummy site since I didn’t pay the site lock fee, so it worked out.
We explored colonial Concord and Lexington and tried to immerse ourselves in the history as much as we could. We swam at the club pool, shopped in town, had a Tuesday Taco night (or maybe it was Wednesday?) and enjoyed looking at my father’s photos and helping with a Liberty Puzzle.
Concord is such a beautiful town with perfectly manicured landscapes and expertly maintained homes and public spaces that it feels idyllic. Returning to my musty, unorganized, cramped camper in the RV park was a little humbling.
At the end of our stay in Concord we had a wonderful dinner at the club with Mom and Dad. The sun was slanting in low and the golf course looked amazing in the soft light. Dad mentioned how what he loves most about golf is just looking at a beautiful course. We had great conversation including our lack of love for the month of August (it signals the end of summer, it’s sort of a tween month, the grass is dying, the weather is so-so, and so on). We had cold drinks, delicious food and the impending departure for us inspired us to savor our time together.
We stayed in my brother’s driveway next and I take my hat off to them for having us. It is not easy hosting an RV in your driveway for an extended period. People using your showers, eating your food, doing their laundry, sleeping on your sheets in your beds, coming and going constantly – in and out, in and out – and generally just being in their space. Not to mention a 35′ trailer taking up half their driveway.
We were taken out on a hike to a windswept and all but abandoned beach called The Spit in Scituate. The tide was way out. We had a picnic dinner and the wind swept the grains of sand along the ground in a hypnotic susurration. The kids ran around looking for sand dollars and hermit crabs while the adults had cocktails. The sun sank to the horizon as herons commuted back home. The wind swept our words away so we mostly sat and shouted indiscriminate phrases to each other and we tried to keep our salads and sandwiches from blowing away. It was a wonderful experience for us mountain folk.
We took a Boston Harbor Islands Lighthouse Tour with the National Parks. It was fun to get out on the water. Boston Harbor is busy! Planes flying low overhead on their way in to Logan, fishing vessels, sailboats, cruises, even jet skis zip all over the place through the disorganized chop. But upon entering the outer harbor and seeing the distant and remote lighthouses that guard the entrance to the Presidential Roads is a neat experience. Graves light is the most removed and looks precariously perched on a barely exposed pile of rock. The tenders out there must be hardy.
We had a delicious (fancy and expensive) dinner in the new Seaport district of Boston and I had another feeling of displacement. A sudden lurch of equilibrium. Like I’m a weeble-wobble whose foundation has been disrupted. Hard to explain.
Our next stay was in Boston, in the austere and grandiose Beacon Hill neighborhood. My aunt put us up in her apartment and we walked the neighborhoods like locals. Sushi on Charles Street? Sure. Walk the Freedom trail? Sure. Dinner at Joe’s in Back Bay? Sure. Shopping on Newbury St? Sure, but just the window variety. I somehow got roped into a street performance and found myself being taught how to dance by a bunch of break-dancing black guys and ‘only one Puerto Rican’. I was a hopeless case.
We got soaked leaving my Aunt’s place waiting for our Uber back to the parking garage. Rain was drumming the roof top and filling puddles in the city. We had to scurry to a hotel awning to wait it out, but of course the entry to the parking garage was on the other side of busy State Street. From there, it was back to my brother’s place and then on to Hyannis the next morning to catch a ferry to Nantucket. The ride over on the Eagle was fun and reminded me of being twelve and visiting my Aunt and Uncle. We arrived and backpacked our stuff to ‘The Barn’, walking the cobblestoned streets of town past The Black Dog and Vineyard Vines. Not a lot of REI backpacks, or Eddie Bauer shirts, or trail running shoes on Nantucket.
On the island we lived the high life and joined the throngs of affluent white people in their polos, and Nantucket Red’s, and summer dresses and lighthouse baskets. We went to Surfside, Sconset, Sankaty, Cisco, Polpis, and Madaket. Evocative names for scenic places that spark memories for those who have been fortunate enough to see them. My kids marveled at my Uncle’s economical and battered ’03 Chevy Aveo (he was an ER Doc) and asked, ‘isn’t he rich?’ When I responded, ‘Yes’ they couldn’t seem to understand why he would drive such a car. A quick lesson in humility.
From there, we had an experience hard to match anywhere in the world on a small, undisclosed location. Here is what I wrote about it: ‘What an interesting, diverting and altogether unusual experience it is to visit ____. How to explain it? Feel like you’ve gone back in time? Like you’ve left the world behind? Like it’s just you and a handful of other people left in the world? It’s all of that and it’s also beautiful in a stark and spartan sort of way. The homes are similar in stature and structure and they are built to blend into the landscapes. But it feels as if nature would not take long to reclaim the land. The roads are rudimentary at best and the northern central part of the island is on a hill so there are views out to sandy beaches and boats bobbing at their moorings. The landscape is all greens and blues and pearly whites. In Colorado it was trees and sky and snow, here it is trees and ocean and sand. It is an austere place, almost severe in some ways with its lack of comforts and amenities. A puritan or quaker like severity. The houses all have sharp angles and neat lines. There is a deafening silence that you can feel even as you talk amongst yourselves. Everyone seems to know each other and there is talk of the 5 o’clock baseball game or the island volleyball game or a bike ride, but you get the sense that, ‘maybe tomorrow’ or ‘not today’ is more likely. There is an alluring peace, a quietude not to be experienced elsewhere.’
With that, we returned to the mainland, stayed on more night with my brother and then pulled the trailer out for points north.
I love Massachusetts.
Will always be, proudly, a ‘Masshole’.
