A Cape Cod Notebook

The dark comes early. At first, I fought it. Disoriented, dazed. And doesn’t it feel like midnight, the moon pooling on the ocean, spilt milk reaching for the shore? At least the clock in the stove, the one I cannot figure out how to reset, is right again.

Great Island in Wellfleet is a beautiful pearl on the Cape Cod National Seashore’s necklace, the most dramatic of a handful of islands strung along Cape Cod Bay, linked by sandy strands.

They appeared suddenly one night on our patio, four young raccoons, a quartet of rumble-tumble trouble. They pressed their little bandit faces against our glass sliders, scratching to get inside our tiny cottage.

It started with the lupine.Last spring, I started taking the hound to Thompson’s Field, a 57-acre conservation area off Route 137 in East Harwich managed by the Harwich Conservation Trust.

I’ve always thought Nantucket was rather flat — elevation-wise, that is. Our highest point is the Madaket Landfill, and after that is Altar Rock in the moors.

We all mark seasons in different ways, often using holidays like Labor Day past, Thanksgiving upcoming. For me, the circle always wheels around the constellation Orion.

I was leading a tour out in ’Sconset the Thursday before Labor Day when a local eyed us warily and said, “Summer’s over, it’s time for you people to leave.” Ouch! Now Labor Day has come and gone, the curtain falling on summer.

My chum, who these days walks the Outer Beach more often than I do, commented that “high tides are reaching further up the beach than they used to.”

The hound has gifted me a new image of hope. And it looks like an otter.