Home again and busy like crazy

Some people like fun and adventure on their vacation. I prefer going to a place I love, where within a day I feel like I've been there forever. Thus for twenty years I camped with my kids at Nickerson State Park in Brewster, and for the last ten years-- now that my kids have lives of their own and prefer to vacation with their own children, best friends and husbands-- I go to Wellfleet with my own friends. No matter how rough my finances get, somehow I manage to pull it off.

I love the Lower Cape. It's incredibly new geologically-- only 10,000 years old!-- and won't last 10,000 more. Winter storms and rising sea levels have narrowed the Wellfleet beaches; at high tide many beaches have only a small strip of dry land, and this year, as two hurricanes passed close to Cape Cod, some beaches were actually cleared at high tide because there was no safe place to be.

This summer I didn't try to blog from the Wellfleet library, just walked on the beach, read, kept my journal, and savored the rich dreams that I only have when I let myself sleep until I wake up. A lot has changed for me in the twelve months between vacations: health challenges, job changes, and the sense that at 62 years old, I may as well do what I want!

Actually, I won't be 62 until December. Next year, at 62, instead of my annual contribution to the National Park system, I get to buy a Golden Eagle pass good for the rest of my life! That makes me smile, because who knows how long life will be, but I intend to get my money's worth.

I knew that as soon as I got home I'd have to jump in with both feet both personally and politically. Both my daughters and my only granddaughter have September birthdays; one nephew is getting married next Saturday and the other nephew's girlfriend is having a baby shower. I have to buy a dress, buy gifts, and thoroughly clean my 1991 Dodge Shadow, now home to a new bumpersticker: Everything is Connected. I wrote a couple of new poems while I was away, and I'm thinking it's time to pull my poems together in a collection.

Politically, there's a million things I want to do, but stopping a biomass plant from being built in Springfield is my number one priority (why I was in Boston yesterday), with door-to-door outreach about ward representation my second priority (why I'll be in Boston today, picking up a small grant for voter outreach).

Right now I'm living in all dimensions of my life and hope to stay that way for a while. I don't like myself much in stick-figure mode, even though I can be effective that way. I have a window beside my desk and I will leave it open as long as I can.

First one, then two, then ten, and now we see
a thousand flecks of red against the shore
where ladybugs have chosen they will spend
the end of summer. Now they fly no more
but nestle in the seaweed strands or in
the final August footprints that we leave
upon the cooling sand. What days they've seen!
What wind has passed beneath their wings, and how
much like the wind the breaking waves now sound.
They rest. They fall asleep. The sun goes down.