My local paper, the Provincetown Independent, recently featured an item about the construction of a wetu in Truro, the village next door to my own here in the Outer Cape. What is a “wetu”? It’s a small wood-framed structure, “built to withstand Cape Cod’s elements”, that was the traditional dwelling of Cape Cod’s indigenous Wampanoag […]
January 29, 2022 – 5:42 pm
We’ve had quite a storm today here on the far end of Cape Cod, and it’s still raging as I write (5:26 PM Saturday). All day long the northeast wind off the Atlantic has been ferocious, and the snow’s been falling (or more accurately, blowing sideways) at two to three inches per hour. I’m writing […]
November 29, 2021 – 6:58 pm
Wellfleet Harbor today, in a late-November mood:
December 14, 2019 – 4:49 pm
Wellfleet Harbor this afternoon:
Sunset tonight at Rock Harbor on Cape Cod:
A habit of mine is to get outside to walk a few miles every day; it lifts the spirit, and clears the mind. Usually I am in one of Cape Cod’s remoter precincts, so I walk a favorite hilly trail in the pine-woods; but sometimes I am in New York, and I take my walk, […]
February 24, 2018 – 5:56 pm
Now and then it’s good to step back from the dumpster-fire of current events and media. A quiet rainy day in the Outer Cape, with my lovely wife off in Europe visiting our grandson, is such an occasion. I spent the day with my friend Alec, an avid outdoorsman, who has very generously been teaching […]
February 19, 2018 – 6:52 pm
Today I paid a visit to one of the Outer Cape’s old burial grounds: the Pine Grove cemetery in Truro. It’s a remote spot, some distance down a wooded dirt road off one of Truro’s smaller byways. The place has some notoriety: in 1969, a man named Tony Costa murdered, sexually violated and dismembered […]
November 30, 2017 – 10:12 pm
Sunset tonight on the tidal flats at Wellfleet Harbor:
A brisk cold front blew through the Outer Cape late this afternoon, with dark clouds and heavy rain. As the front went past, just before sunset, the sky opened up on the western horizon, out over Cape Cod Bay. I went out to have a look. The first thing I saw was a magnificent double […]
A black-capped chickadee, to be precise. (Beech Forest Trail, Provincetown, MA, last Thursday.)
We had some dramatic weather around the Outer Cape yesterday. Here are a few photos from the bluff above Maguire Landing in Wellfleet: And here are some shots taken a little later on from High Head, overlooking North Truro, Pilgrim Lake, and Provincetown: Here are two views of […]
February 5, 2016 – 5:46 pm
Snow in Wellfleet today. The view out our front door this afternoon:
November 1, 2015 – 1:27 pm
In a fine rant, Fred Reed examines the national character, and finds it wanting. We read: The United States has become a nation of weak, pampered, easily frightened, helpless milquetoasts who have never caught a fish, fired a gun, chopped a log, hitchhiked across the country, or been in a schoolyard fight. If their cat […]
October 17, 2015 – 10:40 pm
A pretty sunset today in Wellfleet today, looking northwest from Duck Harbor:
October 29, 2014 – 10:38 am
Here’s Wellfleet Harbor, just after sunset Sunday.
October 26, 2014 – 4:52 pm
I love autumn in the Outer Cape. Here are a few photos I’ve snapped around Wellfleet lately: Here’s the sky in tatters over Wellfleet Harbor after last week’s storm: And some fall color along Commercial Street: A leaden sky over Cape Cod Bay, looking southwest from Bound Brook Island: […]
January 27, 2014 – 7:27 pm
It’s the dead of winter here in the Outer Cape, and it’s been unusually cold and snowy. That doesn’t stop me from getting outside, though. Here are a few cell-phone shots from some recent walks around Wellfleet: First, our little wooded lane, after Tuesday’s snowstorm: Next, a few shots of Duck Harbor from about ten […]
October 19, 2013 – 8:42 pm
It’s Oysterfest weekend in Wellfleet once again, and your humble correspondent has reclaimed his crown at the annual Spelling Bee. I realize that by now most of you have likely already heard — I’m sure it’s all over the national media — but I thought the rest of you would like to know.
The psychologist and author Steven Pinker lives in Truro, here on the Outer Cape, and is a talented photographer. Here’s his most recent collection.
February 4, 2013 – 5:20 pm
February is probably the quietest and loneliest month on the Outer Cape, but in many ways the deep winter is most beautiful time of year out here, I think. Here’s the high bluff at the end of Longnook Road, Truro, late yesterday afternoon.
October 29, 2012 – 1:03 am
It’s 2 a.m., and getting mighty windy here in Wellfleet as Sandy moves north. Everybody knows the power’s going out sooner or later. I know that the worst of this storm is going to be felt south and west of here, but my, that wind sure is howling, and at times like this it’s awfully […]
October 26, 2012 – 10:31 pm
It being a lovely day yesterday, I stopped by the harbor to take in the view. Here’s the vista from Mayo Beach: After a minute or so I noticed that there was some sort of large animal in distress just offshore. All I could see was a single dark flipper lifting out of the water […]
August 22, 2012 – 8:31 pm
Rather a nice sunset just now over at Duck Harbor:
August 12, 2012 – 7:00 pm
Just stood in the checkout line at the Wellfleet general store with Noam Chomsky. We didn’t chat.
February 4, 2012 – 4:57 pm
For the past month or so, common dolphins (Delphinus delphis) have been stranding themselves in record numbers on Wellfleet’s bay and harbor beaches. Here and here are some video clips from CNN. Wellfleet has always been a hotspot for this sort of thing; the clean cold waters of the harbor are full of good things […]
January 21, 2012 – 10:17 pm
First real snow of the season here in Wellfleet. Here are two views from chez Waka, taken earlier today (and about half a foot ago). Looking northwest, down the hill: Looking east, out the back door: I liked the way these tree-trunks along the lane looked in the grey light:
December 12, 2011 – 9:08 pm
Not having much to say tonight, I thought I’d just put up a few pictures I snapped around Wellfleet yesterday and today. I apologize for the mediocre quality: I’d left my camera behind in New York this time around, and so they were taken with my phone. Yesterday I decided to explore the path leading […]
December 11, 2011 – 6:50 pm
We have coyotes out here in the Wellfleet woods, though we hear them oftener than see them. They like to socialize on moonlit nights, and last night they had a pretty good jamboree going not far from our little hilltop. The sound of it isn’t exactly musical, to my ear at least, but you can […]
November 28, 2011 – 5:19 pm
I stopped by Wellfleet Harbor shortly before sunset today to take in the view. Here’s the scene, looking southwest from the seawall at Kendrick Avenue (forgive the poor quality – I took these shots with the camera in my phone, which has a blurry lens): Wait a minute — what the hell is that thing […]
November 14, 2011 – 6:12 pm
It was an unusually mild November day here in the Outer Cape, and I went for a walk in Wellfleet’s Fox Island Marsh & Pilgrim Spring Woodlands Conservation Area, which I’d never explored. While it’s hardly the Bridger Wilderness, the conservation area offers a lovely trail through pine forests down to the salt marshes at […]
October 9, 2011 – 10:08 pm
The Northeast has been enjoying a fantastic spell of weather lately. Here in the Outer Cape, today was simply perfect: low humidity, cloudless azure skies, warm sweet sunshine, and temperatures in the upper seventies, with a fragrant, balmy breeze as gentle as a baby’s breath. At Newcomb Hollow Beach, it felt more like August — […]
August 27, 2011 – 4:24 pm
Well here we are again, almost exactly a year later, perched on our little hilltop way out on a sandy spit in the Atlantic, bracing ourselves for a hurricane. Last year’s offering, Earl, missed us to the east; this one is supposed to pass by a little way off to the west. It’s always a […]
We’re still up in Cape Cod, very busy the past few days with chores and domestic duties as we get ready to head back to Gotham. I’ve got nothing new to offer tonight, so I thought I’d repost an old item (something I don’t think I’ve ever done before): a favorite Wellfleet-themed entry from three […]
January 1, 2011 – 4:13 pm
The Outer Cape in winter may be chilly, sparsely populated, and a little bleak (all of which suits me just fine), but one of the pleasures of being here in the cold months is the shell-fishing. In winter, when our highly prized oysters are at their peak of flavor and plumpness, the Wellfleet oyster-beds are […]
October 16, 2010 – 3:15 pm
Well, the shouting is over, the dust has settled, the press have dashed off to file their dispatches, and there is a new champion speller here in Wellfleet: a fellow named Robert something, an amiable fellow who has finished in the top two or three for years. It came down to the two of us […]
October 15, 2010 – 10:48 pm
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 […]
September 3, 2010 – 12:04 pm
The Outer Cape is battening the hatches in anticipation of Hurricane Earl, which will be passing by here later today. We’re already getting bands of heavy rain, and the wind is picking up. The tide will be high as Earl approaches, and the heavy seas are expected to do a lot of damage to the […]
August 23, 2010 – 9:57 pm
We’re having quite a storm here on the Outer Cape tonight, with heavy rain, temperatures only in the upper 50’s, and 50-mph wind gusts. At dusk we went to Newcomb Hollow beach, where the Atlantic was foaming white halfway to the horizon, and the northeast wind was so fierce that I could hardly get the […]
December 5, 2009 – 12:48 am
We’re off duty today, and so the lovely Nina and I took a long walk this afternoon on the beach at Maguire’s Landing (a.k.a. Lecounts Hollow) here in Wellfleet. It being December, we had the place all to ourselves. (Well, almost, as you’ll see below.) It was very beautiful. I took a few pictures, shortly […]
October 18, 2009 – 6:19 pm
We’ve been off the air for a couple of days, having holed up in Wellfleet for a long weekend. The weekend after Columbus Day is when the town hosts its annual Oysterfest, a two-day celebration of our renowned local mollusc. As you can see from the schedule of events, there are concerts, lectures, exhibitions and […]
February 15, 2009 – 2:22 pm
We are in Wellfleet for the long weekend, and the Lower Cape seems particularly tranquil and beautiful under the blue winter skies. Yesterday the memsahib and I took a little spin up to Provincetown, at the outermost tip of the Cape, and along the way stopped at Longnook Beach in Truro to take a quick […]
December 13, 2008 – 1:00 pm
We are back in Wellfleet for the next few days, having driven up here after work yesterday. We arrived at about one a.m., under a startlingly brilliant full moon, with an icy wind shaking the pines and bare oaks.
From my friend Jess Kaplan comes a little news item that doesn’t amount to much, really, in these tempestuous times, but which made a nice break from the customary media diet of catastrophe, vice, and woe. It’s about a little lost lighthouse.
Now that you’ve joined me on a vigorous early-spring hike to Cape Cod Bay, it’s time to reward ourselves with a scrumptious local delicacy: some of our famous Wellfleet Oysters. Here’s how it’s done.
March 23, 2008 – 12:57 am
Friday, March 21st, was the first full day of Spring, and here in the outer reaches of Cape Cod, it was more lion than lamb. The temperature hovered in the thirties, and all day a steady wind roared out of the West. But the sun was shining in a cloudless sky, and after weeks cooped […]
March 21, 2008 – 10:44 pm
I normally spend at least ten hours a day at the computer; I’m taking a little break today. Back shortly.
January 27, 2008 – 10:50 pm
It’s ten p.m., and the memsahib and I have just got back to Brooklyn after spending a couple of days in the outer reaches of Cape Cod.
November 4, 2007 – 11:48 pm
Readers may be pleased to know that we did not in fact perish in this weekend’s storm, and are once again safely back in Gotham. I will say, though, that it was quite a ride: the winds did indeed perform as expected, knocking down many trees, and by Saturday afternoon had blacked out the entire […]
November 3, 2007 – 2:41 pm
As promised, the former Hurricane Noel is giving Cape Cod a virile rogering. The outer Cape — a narrow, longitudinal wisp of sand that comprises the picturesque villages of Chatham, Orleans, Eastham, Wellfleet, Truro and Provincetown — juts a long way out into the Atlantic, and is getting a far stiffer dose than points west. […]