When an opportunity for free lodging on Cape Cod taps you on the shoulder you turn around to take notice from the routine of life that stretches out ahead of getting  the bills paid and the projects moving forward.   It becomes an easy thing to drop the shovel and and say yes.   Our opportunity came in the form of house sitting for my sister’s neighbor’s mother in W. Dennis about half way up the cape.   Out of the blue we suddenly were packing for a week in lobster land with my sister and husband

Fell in love with the beauty and peace of Cape Cod in the Fall off season and discovered the sport of surf casting for Stripers when they come close to shore during their migration South.  I found out a lot  by talking to local fisherman and from a great book I read on the subject called Striper Surf by Frank Daignault.   I met one grizzled old man nestled down against a drift fence with a pair of binoculars looking out to sea for birds feeding off   minnows wounded by feeding stripers.   Such a feeding leaves a detectable oil residue on the surface that will calm the water.   I asked  if he came out there often.  He said “In season, every day for the last 30 years”.  If you’re into stripers, send me an email.  I would love to learn more.

a poem                         Summer Late

On the Cape,  it’s summer late with spare limb in the forecast . Hunger drives up migrating stripers and blues smashing into swoops of minnows driven against the shore,  sky bound to escape. 

 The news I hear volumned low on the TV in which every fourth word comes through, “…unemployment …..record high….stimulus…”,  remind me gratefully I am on vacation.  Moving out into a warm sun for a new perch I sit among the enlarged stage of  neighboring sounds from sky and bush that now can hold forth in the quiet leavings of summer’s end.