Dancing on Bridges

Photo Credit: Jack Riley BY KIMBERLY MAYER   At the end of every summer season residents of Cape Cod, Massachusetts gather on overpasses to wave farewell to visitors on the bridges that connect Cape Cod to the mainland. Year after year, that’s the tradition. But whenever I heard my mother tell the story, she had them “dancing on the bridges.” Having retired to Cape Cod with my father, I think she was always so exhausted after hosting everyone all summer long she imagined a celebratory dance.    Here too, the visitors, for the most part, have vanished. Short of throwing yourself off the dock on Labor Day like the staff at Roche Harbor Marina, I’m not sure what end of season traditions we have on island. One might say being able to walk the sidewalks with ease in town, and not having to stand in any lines. Our friend Adam Eltinge adds, “and turning left in town,” if you’re a car.   As soon as the tents at the San Juan County Fair are folded up, a seasonal tide is set to turn and autumnal equinox is almost upon us. Big leaf maples start to turn, and summer birds get the memo and head south. We can renew our garden activity with fall planting, although rains will relieve us of all the summer watering. As Susan Vernon wrote in Rainshadow World, “As the days progress, the morning fog drifts in and out gently nudging summer away.”    That nudge may be a little less gentle each year, I’d say. Each time around it becomes increasingly apparent that we’re not here for very long and that our time is going faster. In Late Migrations Margaret Renkl describes this phenomena of time and place as a reminder “… that the world is turning, that the world is only a great blue ball rolling down a great glass hill, gaining speed with each rotation.”   My favorite time of year on island without exception is when hay has been rolled, and round bales dot the fields. This is my “South of France moment” each year. And every year I have every intention to set up an easel and paint it, or sketch it, and as it is I barely catch it with my camera before the bales are gone from the fields. Ten years ago, it seemed I had weeks in which to set up. This year, I must have blinked. Great blue ball, indeed.   Originally published in The Journal of the San Juan Islands 9/18/24