I was out at Race Point Beach, which is on the very edge of nowhere. I thought I saw someone swimming, a brown silky head, sleek with water leaping out. I thought- who would be crazy enough to swim in the rip tide, with the wind frothing the waves into white caps?
Seals, that’s who. A pod of them played together swooping out of the water, graceful and silly. Today the water was a bright blue green, more like Caribbean than the cold, gray Atlantic. The tourists, hopeful of a day at the beach scurried away as the wind whipped sand scoured their legs. Ouch.
The beautiful Selkies didn’t mind. Next stop Chatham Harbor, or maybe the White Cliffs of Dover. When you stand with your toes in the water at Race Point, you can feel the vastness of the Atlantic stretching out before you. It’s deep and secretive. What creatures lurk in the Atlantic Trench? What mysteries are lost in the Bermuda Triangle?
I’ll never know. The Selkies might, but they weren’t sharing secrets today. (And it was time for Cappuccino and a Gelato on Commercial Street. Yum.)
