Cape Cod Notebook Episode by Mary Bergman

To arrive at the Bank Street beach in Harwich Port, one must pass through its small windblown parking lot, a trip made dozens of times in my youthful race to the water’s edge.

Now that the peninsula is filled to the brim once again, if you take a hike along the beautiful shore between high and low tides, beyond the confines of a public beach, be sure you have one of three things with you, or risk arrest for trespassing: A fishing rod, a gun, or a boat.

Flea markets are where lazy people go when they want to go yard-sale-ing.No driving all over the place or trying to find parking in some snotty residential area that frowns on yard sales.

We are past the solstice, and I am trying not to get too down about it. The fog that rolls in each night is a welcome break from the heat.

July is coming quickly, so it’s almost time for my gardening motivation to go into hibernation.

Isn’t everything we make temporary in the grand scheme of things? My day to day work is to promote historic preservation on Nantucket. We talk about preserving things in perpetuity. But on an eroding pile of sand, perpetuity is a relative term.

One of the most beautiful spots in Wellfleet, or for that matter, on the entire Lower Cape, is Old Wharf Road. It is one of those headlands that, along with Indian Neck and Lieutenant’s Island, thrust out into greater Wellfleet Harbor.

As we drove off, disappointed, I said I don’t want to JUST be on Cape Cod. I want to feel like I’m here, really here, sand between my toes, waves crashing, gulls calling out for a meal.

We are running out of space at the Nantucket landfill. I spent the winter driving by dumpsters, unable to stop myself from looking over the edge.

Despite what might be in your head, the 25-mile path from Yarmouth to Wellfleet is not just a bike trail. There are runners and skateboarders and walkers, many of us with dogs.

The most important teacher I ever had was not some Harvard professor, or one of many newspaper editors who carved up my prose. It wasn’t even a person, a whole person anyway. It was an appendage.

What really impresses me at this time of year, at any time of year, actually, are the lichens. These otherworldly beings, growing on tree bark and branches, spreading on the ground or on rocks or gravestones, seem to thrive in any weather.

The other day I took some old friends up to Great Point. The weather wasn’t particularly good — Nantucket in March, we kept grumbling. I don’t think they’d mind me saying old friends, as it’s true. Both are older than me by a mile, and they don’t get around as easily as they once did.

Those of you who travel the north side of Cape Cod know that Route 6A has been closed in Dennis for several months, and a detour sends drivers either north through Sesuit Neck or south to Scargo Hill Road.

The European green crab has quite the reputation. They’re smart ... in a dangerous way. They’re voracious, predatory and they eat their young!

My father stands in the doorway of Henry David Thoreau’s cabin on Walden Pond. Of course, there is no cabin anymore, instead the cabin’s footprint is marked with narrow granite stones, giving the whole place an unintended funerary feeling.

My dog America, a full-on poodle, loves to stare into pines and oaks that quill out of a hillside down to the marsh. She’ll do this sitting on a comfy bed by a window, standing outside on a deck, or curled atop pine needles.