{"id":1038,"date":"2019-12-03T22:24:35","date_gmt":"2019-12-03T22:24:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/?p=1038"},"modified":"2021-01-29T14:54:38","modified_gmt":"2021-01-29T14:54:38","slug":"living-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-bridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/?p=1038","title":{"rendered":"Living on the Wrong Side of the Bridge"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my favorite memoirs from years ago was by an NPR writer, Carol Wasserman titled\u00a0Swimming\u00a0at Suppertime<\/a>. It was about life on the wrong side of Buzzards Bay, in her case Wareham, which for me is actually the right side. But it\u2019s always stuck with me, the title and subtitle \u2014 she was mourning the loss of her husband, in between writing, \u00a0living year-round, and swimming (at suppertime) with her lady friends in the gritty town of Wareham, Massachusetts \u2014 a stone\u2019s throw (if you\u2019ve got a good arm) \u2014 from chi-chi Cape Cod.<\/p>\r\n

Me, I live on Cape Cod. I grew up here in between my father\u2019s military tours in other places. And Wareham, Marion, Mattapoisett, and beyond \u2014 the Route 6 West corridor along Buzz Bay \u2014 is more like the Cape Cod I remember \u00a0from childhood and into my college years. It was\u00a0more colorful, more real, more of a struggle, and more of a delight for those who survive here year-round, because we were all in the same boat.<\/p>\r\n

We took a ride to Wellfleet a couple of weeks ago, hugging the back roads that wind along the backside of Route 28 on our way east. It was a Saturday on the brink of the full moon, and I was feeling hemmed in, crowded, suffocated, wanting to climb out of the box of this island-peninsula \u2014 serene and accessible open space is becoming rarer here, speed and traffic more prevalent. I want slow, meandering, and I feel more of that on the other side, even in the eastern Massachusetts land of more strip malls and industrial parks and more traffic \u2014 the sky and roads just seem to open up a bit more, I don\u2019t feel as trapped.<\/p>\r\n

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I wanted to be back over the bridge \u2014 but as we rolled further along to our destination, I started feeling lighter, a little less encumbered \u2014 noticing the undulating marshlands and bogs with the crimsons, golds, and russets of a coastal autumn. As we moved beyond Chatham and Orleans, and on out towards Eastham and Wellfleet, I began to relax more. Off-season on the Outer Cape can be close to desolate, a stark contrast to what it is in the summer. It can truly feel like the edge of the world. Wellfleet was quiet, but not quite yet shifted in to winter mode. We parked down near the wharf, and walked up to and across Uncle Tim\u2019s Bridge, for a walk around the tiny island that sits in the brackish water that empties into Wellfleet Harbor. Ah, peace, although not quite on my \u201cright side of the bay,\u201d but for that morning, for me, it worked. I relaxed, enjoying the view, the air, the outdoors, the ground beneath my feet, and contemplated what it must be like for people who don\u2019t have either the time, or the means for these therapeutic escapes. Wellfleet is an example of what the rest of the cape has become \u2014 more of a playground for the wealthy, than a home for the rest of us.<\/p>\r\n

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One of my favorite memoirs from years ago was by an NPR writer, Carol Wasserman titled\u00a0Swimming\u00a0at Suppertime. It was about life on the wrong side of Buzzards Bay, in her case Wareham, which for me is actually the right side. But it\u2019s always stuck with me, the title and subtitle \u2014 she was mourning the … Continue reading “Living on the Wrong Side of the Bridge”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[625],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-soul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1038"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1390,"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038\/revisions\/1390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artfoodsoul.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}