Sylvia's Journal

Some weeks ago (when it was still summer), a few humpback wales showed up at Singing Beach and even gave a full breaching show. We missed it but saw it later on the news. Axel and Sita had detected something that looked like fins in the distance between Lobster Cove and Baker’s Island, but I didn’t think much of it. Waves often look like fins.

Sita had been scouring the horizon for Great White Sharks – they are present up and down the east coast of the US, further south, but there are a few near the Massachusetts coast according to a shark tracking app.  A woman in a wet suit was killed by a Great White, not that far off her home’s pier near Harpswell, in Maine. As the crow flies (and the Great White swims), it’s not that far away from us.

I have tried to convince our daughters that a Great White Shark (some are over 10 ft long) would risk getting beached in Lobster Cove at low tide. But they are cautious and don’t like it when I swim out to the mouth of the cove and back.

I wonder if all these sea creatures are coming close to the shores to check out whether we are still there, what with the havoc created by the novel corona virus (is it still novel I wonder?).

The deer and bunnies are also out in great numbers and eyeing our juice greens. We bought some dome shaped plastic cups on sticks made by the Have-A-Heart company that act as a repellent because, the product information says, they give the animals a whiff of blood from another animal (one of their own maybe?).  It worked for the beans, but not for the lettuce. Peter Rabbit could have told us that.

The summer is racing by as it always does, but this time it feels even more as if this was the summer that wasn’t. Not for the weather, we got two heat waves, but for the absence of events that mark the summer weeks like open air concerts, sport events, parades, celebrations, wedding and other parties, etc.

We can count ourselves lucky to be living in a place that would be a summer vacation destination for many: a house on a cove with its own beach, kayaks, a surf plank, and place to start a summer evening beach fire (with or without s’mores). Instead of going out for dinner, we cook gourmet meals and do not skimp on the wine. In the morning we have breakfast just above or on the beach as we see fit, depending on the tide. And Axel’s dory and lobster traps provide us with the gifts of the ocean (not all the time, but enough to bring the cost of the permit and bait down to something reasonable). Although we worked hard for our (nearly complete) retirement and are plucking the ripe fruits now, we also had an enormous amount of luck that got us to where we are now.