The Two Faces of Cape Cod

The time we spend on the Cape defines what the Cape is to us and how we see it. For those spending a week or two on the Cape during summer, the Cape is a chaotic place, full of holiday-makers wandering the streets or flocking to the beaches. Their cars line the roads, making it almost impossible to get anywhere if you are a local, turning right takes on a whole new meaning. Walking through Chatham is like stepping into a scene from Jaws, cars and people everywhere, the streets full of movement and noise.

P-Town MA at the height of summer (stock photo)

For those who live there as locals the Cape is seen very differently, it is a place with two faces. The chaotic face of the summer I just discussed and the calm face of spring, fall and winter, where stillness and calm prevail. The two faces of chaos and calm are diametrically opposed, yet both are perspectives of the same place.

The contrast between these two faces fascinates me. It makes me wonder whether those who travel here in search of the stillness of Cape Cod may, in some way, have missed the point.  The beauty of the Cape for me is found in the quiet moments. I choose to spend my time photographing the quieter face of the Cape, searching for stillness, and watching time to pass. Observing what is in front of me and reflecting on what I seen.

The same beach that is crowded with people in July can feel a million miles away from that same beach in November. The umbrellas and beach chairs are gone. The families have left. The noise has disappeared. There may be nothing but a lone gull, a fisherman standing at the water's edge, or sometimes simply the fog and the sound of waves crashing against an empty shoreline.

Quiet beach on the Southern Cape

The back roads and main streets are quiet again, places that only a few months earlier were filled with people have returned to themselves. There is little to hear except the wind moving through the trees and the sound of crows somewhere in the distance, and perhaps this is what I love most about the Cape.

Not the Cape that appears on postcards in the height of summer, but the Cape that reveals itself when everyone has gone home. The Cape becomes less about doing and more about observing, taking time and reflecting. There is time to walk without having somewhere to go. Time to stand and watch the weather move across the water. Time to notice how the light falls differently across the dunes, or how the landscape changes from one visit to the next.

Road on the Outer Cape heading toward the Three Sisters.

The quieter months seem to strip away some of the distractions brought by the masses and leave the landscape exposed. When the crowds disappear, I find myself seeing the Cape differently, like a seeing an old friend from a different perspective.

My Cape is not masses on the beaches and bumper to bumper cars, my Cape is quiet and still, left behind and forgotten. The fog rolls across the marsh, the dune grass blows in the wind, a solitary figure walks along an otherwise empty beach in the distance and the crows caw invisibly in the fog laden sky as I walk along a beach with shells and stones left behind by the tide. The small passing moments that are easily overlooked in the summer.

Fog rolling in on South Chatham beach.

This is my Cape, the Cape I have come to know and love. It is quieter, slower, and sometimes it is grey and windswept and almost empty. But in that quiet, there is something I find difficult to describe. A sense that the landscape has room to breathe. A feeling that, once the summer has passed and the crowds have gone, the Cape becomes itself again. Perhaps the Cape does not really have two faces after all. Perhaps it has always had just one. We simply see it differently depending on how much noise surrounds us.

Thanks for following and please share with others who you think might appreciate this.

Sincerely

Gary

P.S. I will be undertaking a new photography project in October/November and will be uploading new prints for sale for those who are interested. More to come on website to be sure to check in from time to time.