Winter can be raw and ferocious or still and sparkling, but never bleak on the outer cape. The other night we could feel the house shake from the force of blizzard winds coming from the north across the pond, throwing ice against our cedar shake. Luckily, we only suffered a branch through a screen and our power held firm. We were far more fortunate than the vast majority of people out here in the blizzard of February 2013.
We drove to First Encounter Beach and found the road blocked. The large parking area was covered with storm surge slush chunked with the timber that had been decks and steps. It was low tide and the beach below the debris was swept clean, the snow mounded in a berm near the normal high tide line. The protective dune torn away to form a new divide and fringe for the beach.
At Nauset Light Beach on the Atlantic, the bottom of the stairs down to the beach are dangling. The escarpment has been further eroded as the ocean has its way with the land, continuously redefining where we may be. The light itself remains safe at a distance, for now.
Winter affords us much greater visibility to the natural world as those pesky leaves are mostly gone for the season. The drama on our pond is sometimes stark, but beautiful in its own way. A Red-tailed Hawk takes advantage of a Merganser frozen in the ice after failing to save itself; a Great Blue Heron makes off with his catch (stealth pays); a Kingfisher watches and waits.
