Many of the lights that welcomed sailors, or warned them off, are now gone from the headlands and from houses along the shore that no longer have to worry about their men any more than they have to worry about themselves. The mackerel fleets are no longer thick on the horizon. The wharves are gone that used to take in the mackerel at Wellfleet on the Bay side. No one eats salt mackerel any more that I know of. I have a friend who spent his boyhood in New York State who was given salt mackerel to eat on Sunday mornings. It had been soaked in milk overnight, having been taken out of a “kentle,” which was a small wooden keg, the top wider than the base, about a quarter of a barrel in size. His observation was that it was much too salty a dish for his taste. The talkers at the livery stable, the central store, or the barbershop are also gone, as well as the sea captains who retired at the age of forty-five or fifty to become big men in their communities. The horses, truck gardens, fish heads, rum and rum runners are gone too, and what old men still whittle boats for the tourists on the beach? The ancient marvels who used to gather Cape Cod moss on their backs, telling hilarious stories about chicken stealing, cow “dressing” (manure), boundary disputes, occasional romantic murders, and hard days at sea no longer seem to be available for reference. What a lot of solid objects seem to have gone from the world! Perhaps I have left history behind too soon, saying, in effect: “Choose what age you like. You may find yourself in another.” Perhaps it is no fault of mine. During my autumn and winter walks I did find a lasting pleasure in recognizing old things, reconstructing neighborliness, even from a distance, learning to see the silence--the growth and shape of things, the riches of “slow time.” The ponds especially, in the Wellfleet and South Truro regions, protected by the woods around them and the land leading up to the cliffs above the beach, were clear and deep and seemed to reflect quiet habitation over a long time. The water lapped on sandy shores in the sweet, airy winter stillness, broken by the loud, bright braying of blue jays. Coon tracks were sharply etched on the shallow margins where they had gone fishing for fresh-water mussels that left meandering traces on the pond bottom. On the far ends in the shadows there were occasional ducks, like blue-winged teal, mallards, or scaups. At Gull Pond in Wellfleet one January day there were scarfs of ice along the shore, and out in the center herring gulls flew up and settled down on open water where a light cold wind broke across the surface. Wavelets were continually pushing and jostling broken ice so that it made a high singing, almost bell-like sound.