One of the greatest gifts my self-taught naturalist father ever bestowed upon me was the gift of curiosity. With that curiosity came a deep abiding love of the natural world, which grew and blossomed throughout the decades.

I returned from Cape Cod yesterday evening, my husband, three cats, and husky mix, Luna, in tow. We spent the week exploring the Cape, our yearly visit, wandering up to Provincetown (where my family stayed in the 70’s and 80’s) and down to Sandwich, to visit Titcomb’s Bookshop and the boardwalk. I reminisced throughout our travels along route 6A about family visits to Thornton W Burgess‘ home, where my dad would point out the different bird species, muse about turtles and quote the late writer’s works. We would wander along the Sandwich beaches, catch a scenic train ride from Buzzards Bay, or take a Cape Cod Cranberry Bog Tour. I remember those happy moments, visiting the gift shops and buying chocolate covered cranberries, looking through the window of the slow moving train, and skipping along the nature paths chatting about Buster Bear or Reddy Fox. I am sure there were tenser moments sprinkled throughout our days walking along the rocky sand; we were a young family of four and my parents could not have always enjoyed the company of their curious and often bickering daughters. But our vacations are mostly memorable for the joys of exploration, while escaping from our daily middle class (this was the 1970’s middle class) lives.

When my family was not exploring the lower Cape, we made or way to the Outer Cape, staying at the Ainsworth Cottages at the edge of Provincetown. This area offered up an entirely new experience, from walking the dunes to riding bikes on the well-trodden bike path, to lounging on the beach, mere feet from our tiny cottage. We would visit the National Seashore, exploring the paths and trails, the lighthouses and giant waves. I was delighted when we found fiddler crabs or Jingle Shells. Our pockets would be bulging, filled with our new found treasures (shells not the crabs!). On Sunday we would walk to the local Episcopal Church for a service and head into Provincetown to shop and eat ice cream cones. As I morphed into an unruly teenager I would be drawn to the shopping scene, jewelry, flowing skirts with bells, and glass baubles for my shelves at home.

I have returned to the Cape frequently as an adult, although not to the old accommodations. After leaving home and having my own small family, with the growing popularity of Cape Cod and its subsequent price increases, I searched out places I could afford. But I continued to sit on the beaches, and watched my son play with his trains and splash in the waves. I would visit PTown, perusing the shops, many of which were new additions and a few that had survived throughout the upheavals of the US economy. After my son went off to college and meeting my current husband, we would venture to his family home in Barnstable and I would explore his childhood haunts (Four Seas Ice Cream, Craigville Beach, and Wequaquet Lake). We made our own traditions, takeout pizza from Barbone eaten on the beach, exploring villages along 6A, and walks with the dog after dinner. We continue our day trips to Provincetown, eating outside with our dog, and finding small treasures to take home. The memorable moments morph, grow, change and shift. Each year threads from our childhoods emerge and vanish as we watch old building and open spaces disappear, replaced with huge houses and manicured lawns. We return to the water, the herons, the marshes, the natural world, which, although shrinking, still manages to survive. I return to that curiosity instilled by my bird-loving father, the man whose presence is shrinking with age, but still is rooted deeply in my memories and photographs.