Geologists say that this truly “narrow land,” no more than a mile wide in some sections, seven or eight in others, may vanish under the sea in five or six thousand years. Its border of sands is always in the process of roaming and shifting. The Cape has no bedrock. Its rocks are migrants, brought down from the north by moving ice. In spite of the evidence of some once fairly rich timberland and deep topsoil, the Cape does not convince you of any depth and permanence other than its alliance with salt water. The sea gives and the sea takes away, breaking through a barrier beach during winter storms and roaring into the marsh and sheltered inlet behind, cutting down cliffs a foot or two a year, or imperceptibly stealing inches from a low-lying shore; while it adds new beaches, packs new tons of sand around an outlying spit or shoal. Last year, when I accompanied a group of children on their geology class, we uncovered a burying pit for horses and cows in the sandbank at the head of one of the bay beaches. If there had been a farm in the vicinity, a hundred years or more ago, the sea may well have cut in over half a mile to reach these bones. The winds sweep overhead, or merely threaten, the beach waters lap gently, or bridle and roar, and the only stability I feel is that of the tides, a lasting balance between the give-and-take of water and land. The Cape’s ravaged past and stunted present seems transmuted into motion. What this spit of land has taught me is an altered sense of the context of time. I once saw a tree either as material for the woodpile, or something with a growth so slow as to pass notice. Now I have begun to see trees moving by the million in a million varied places. Natural change is made up of so many circumstances, the continuum of life in its vast order is so far from being held down by history, that everything requires us to move on into the distance. It may well be regretted, but Cape Cod is not so much a place for traditionalism as a victim of the beautiful and impatient earth. _The Dead and the Living_ A cautious solemnity is beginning to take hold, although the weather plays new tricks as it alternates between the influences of north and south, east and west. Rain pours over the land. Then, on a warm day, there is thunder and lightning at noon, succeeded by a furious northwest wind after dark, bringing in a deeper cold. The wind hums and roars during the night, and with the sky clear and the stars out, the Cape has a new swept and running feel to it. On a night of full moonlight, there are glassy shadows between the trees, with a dry surf of air; and if sight brings sound, almost tinkling beams of light from the low moon. New stations, new harmonies of cold are suggested by stiff trees on their low hills and hummocks, standing against persimmon and topaz sunsets, or by a crystal edge on the sunlight.