Walk Beside Pobbles

It was a Saturday made for walking. So the wife selected the area off Thacher Road, alongside a story-high ridge of millions of pobbles down to the wooden bridge at Saratoga Creek, gateway to Long Beach. A short walk it is when you let horsepower take you most of the way from School Street in Rockport.

Beautifully colored rocks greeted us as we had hardly stepped from the car. Alongside were evidences of the winter's scrubbing of the shoreline in fragments of weather-beaten lobster pots, ideal for the fireplace, though financially rough to some poor lobsterman.

We came across a noisy brook that was actually running away from the sea instead of into it. For all we knew it may have been heading into town. One sure thing, that brook seemed to be in a big hurry.

The sky was of as much interest as was the shore. Over Gloucester, the sun splashed sheer white clouds, but over Rockport, grim blue-black clouds blotted the sky. Then it rained, lightly, in defiance to the sun. Here's where the wife and I were treated to one of the most glorious rainbows we have ever seen, here or in upstate Vermont. That bow, a perfect arch, with spectrum colors sharply defined, had the dour clouds for a backdrop. A stage director could have done no better.

Its beauty was completely lost on our scampering Molly, the boxer. Her sniffer was in extra high gear as she gunned down the length and breadth of the landscape and slithered along the top of the pobbles heap. Even the barking of fellow dogs in the distance failed to divert her attention from a newly discovered territority. She was the only member of the party to step foot onto Long Beach. The ocean was rushing too fast and deep into the vicinity of Saratoga's bridge to tempt us. For Molly, it was her first swim of the season, maybe a wee bit frigid, but that didn't disturb her.

We decided that if we stayed there too long the four-footer would be marooned, so it ws back-tracking for us to get her back onto dry land, on our side of the pond. Only others to enjoy the richness of the heavens and beach were a couple of young ladies in a Jersey red puddle-jumper who looked interested in the pobbles. But across the highway that was considered an expressway when it was built 40 years ago was the happy laughter of kiddoes.

Beneath the rainbow was the sprawling summer mansion once known as that of Judge Cotter, who, we were told, handled a noted case in maritime law involving a murder aboard ship.
Nearby was a 2 and 1/2 story dwelling characteristic of summer homes of the past, a modest but most liveable affair. Next door was a 20th century type ranch house, modern to the core. Such contrasts dot the Cape these days without clashing.

We trod the pobbles for a spell to catch the sea in April. The surf had calmed down to a ripple, the beach was deserted except for sweeps of gulls and small birds. Returning to the hot-topped road that leads from Thacher Road to the town parking lot, we noted there was no green yet in the marshes. But in those marshes were two spectacular birds that resembled a sort of duck, one with big black and white stripes. It could have been a stool pigeon.

Then to the car again to leave behind what to us is the greatest mass of mail boxes that we have ever met. They were for those who reside in Poole's Village. The walking trio enjoyed every minute of the hour with the pobbles. We will go there again.

J.P.C., Jr.