It’s wonderful how a change in scenery can shift your perspective, improve your mood despite November’s typically gloomy weather in northerly latitudes. I was reflecting on that while chatting with my dad earlier today. He was commiserating with me about the stormy weather in Massachusetts, wondering if I wished I’d stayed in Seattle…
We were talking about November rain and cloudy skies — and how we respond to day after day of cloudy weather. He was feeling sorry for me, facing an autumn storm alone on Cape Cod. But I was relishing the look of the high tide filling in the tidal meadow a few hundred feet away.
Talking about my upbeat mood, he wondered if long-time Seattleites are somehow immune to mood swings from dark and cloudy skies. Au contraire… Was I happy despite the weather because I’m used to gloom, or was it the change in scenery?
I said it was the scenery… Here’s the view this morning from a second story window: our normally grassy meadow awash with several inches of sea water, thanks to an unusually high tide. Ducks were floating nearby.
Here’s the same meadow yesterday at low tide. For this shot I was facing east (instead of the southerly view from our windows). Fall sunshine brightens Popponesset Bay. (Cotuit Bay and the Nantucket Sound are out of sight, behind the dark pine trees.)
Until last night the weather on Cape Cod has been sunny, crisp and chilly (downright frosty at nights) — a sparkling cold that’s a welcome contrast to Seattle’s warmer but dreary November.
As you can see below, the fall colors have faded but not disappeared altogether from Cape Cod, a colorful frame for nearby bays and coves.
This shot shows the cove where we beach and launch our kayaks, now empty of boats or summer vacationers.
Cape Cod’s waters are back under the control of the osprey and great blue herons. You hear seabirds calling, rather than the high-pitched drone of jet skis or motor boats. Except for the birds, the waters are quiet. The shorebirds rule until next summer…