I Have Returned

It is with bittersweet feelings that I have returned home.

We were just getting to know the area, find places we liked to go to; there were so many places we never got to visit, so many things unexplored. Another week, and I would be really chilled out and feel like I had enough of a vacation.

However, it is a reminder that I need down time in order to gear up for the demands of my life and my job, and that though I am not always working in the studio, I am always taking in the landscape and life's experiences to bring back with me for those long hours of art ahead.

I spent my last full day going for a mid morning walk to breakfast, the path which leads through an old graveyard which was the final resting place for the Paine family of Thomas Paine lore. I took many photos, and studied the historical markers, the earlier ones bearing the traditional carvings of weeping willows and such.

After a breakfast burrito, and the walk back home, I painted for a few hours, starting two more canvases.

I wanted one more day on the beach, so after the clouds lifted, leaving an intense blue sky, Larry and I headed back to Great Island. Traffic was light, we made it there quickly, and hiked back into the dunes to the rocky beach. I finished The Great Man, a well written novel about a deceased painter and the women and families he left behind, and started One Thousand White Women, a fascinating and quick moving novel about an actual proposal the Cheyenne Indians made to the U.S. Government, which never happened, but in fiction, the author sends some of the 1,000 women to live with the indians, as well as have their children, at a time during the gold rush, when the indians were being eradicated from the landscape.

On the way back we ate dinner at a place that we have been wanting to go to for years in Wellfleet, Mac's Shack, and shack food IT IS NOT. Starting with martinis (they only use Grey Goose) and Oysters Rockefeller, then main meal being crab stuffed lobster with garlic mashed potatoes. Karen had an oyster shooter which I warily eyed since raw seafood repulses me, and Natalia had the most amazing giant plate of three kinds of sushi. Phill had crab stuffed fish of some kind..and there were more oysters and french fries. Dinner for 5 with drinks for 3 of us, was about 200.00. Extravagant for us perhaps, but remember, we had skipped the beach and town/park fees, cooked a lot at home, so we went out in style.

Yesterday we were up at 6 am, the sun slowly burning off the fog that had settled in for the night. Though we left at 8:30 am, it still took an hour longer than it should have getting home as an accident caused delays on the Mass Pike. 6 hours later, we were back home to two very happy kitties, and I momentarily sadly eyed the lost crop of tomatoes, and then put them behind me. Still on vacation, Larry and I went into town to find cheap dinner...for under 20.00 we had a giant everything bean burrito at Lucy's Tacos, and then ice cream made by a New England co-op and sold in an 18 square foot "walk up" owned by Shawn at Uptown Twist. Movie for the night was rather surreal, futuristic, and dark, Children of Men.

Today-our last official day of vacation together, Larry and I are heading to Karen's to spend a day at the pool, and serve up some dinner that we will communally cook or barbeque. Till then, off to the car wash, and into the studio for a little late morning painting.

Patti O Traveler

Photo 1: Great Island Marsh, on the way to the dunes and beach
Photo 2: morning mist on the marsh behind our rented house
Photo 3: the sun peeking though the fog at the house