We’re in Wellfleet for the weekend. It’s time once again for the Oysterfest, our little town’s annual celebration of its succulent and highly prized indigenous bivalve. (A local oysterman told me today that the festival, which is in its tenth year, is now the fourth-largest town fair in the country, though as we go to press I have no confirmation of that.)
If the prospect of live music, arts and crafts, and of course the opportunity to enjoy Wellfleet’s matchless mollusc served up in every way imaginable weren’t enough to draw immense crowds, there is also the festival’s annual Spelling Bee, where your humble correspondent will be defending his crown tomorrow just after midday.
It’s a cool and blustery October weekend here, with brooding skies, bursts of rain, and a piercing gale. I took a walk along the harbor earlier today, but didn’t linger by the water for long in the chilly blast and stinging, wind-borne sand. It was a dramatic scene, though, and I snapped a photo of it with my cell-phone:
For you Edward Hopper fans, this vantage point is about a hundred yards from where Hopper painted Capron House, shown below. The little shed at the far left of Hopper’s image is the same one you see in the photo’s right foreground. (The Capron house was home to the keeper of the peripatetic Mayo Beach light; the large building in the background of Hopper’s painting is the old Chequessett Inn, which stood on a wharf in the harbor and was destroyed by ice in 1934.)
