I'm Working On A Dream, Mixed Media, Suzanne Lewis © 2010

You can see more of my work on my website at http://www.suzannelewis.com All images © Suzanne Lewis 2011

Saturday, October 31, 2015

Day Three & Four in Euphoria


From the top bunk the ocean doesn't look real.  It resembles a strip of navy blue construction paper pasted under a map blue sky.  I can see why ancient peoples thought the world was flat.  I could remain in this catbird seat for many more hours but my protestant work ethic creeps into the guilt range.   I feel all sixty years as I scooch down the rungs of the ladder on my butt.  It takes a while to settle in and get on "dune time."  My body seems "a little punk" and I realize I'm still detoxing from life on the grid.  Someone has tacked a note up in the galley that reads, "Take me home.  I am too isolated and can't deal."

All I want to do is stare out the window.  I make a pour-over and cogitate-- one of my father's favorite words. 
and thumb through the Euphoria Journal from the past year.  Just about everyone says they'd pay to come back.  

It's breezy.  My weather radio promises a cold front tomorrow.  As long as I see fishing boats I know we're not going to blow over the edge.  Those guys are out there day and night-- the only nightlights I need. What a demanding way of life.  After breakfast I sit on the deck and take a sunbath.  In the warmer months one can use the solar camp shower by filling it with water early and letting it warm in the sun all day.  It's amazing how hot it will get.  My friend Peter has a more elaborate shower facility.  He connects a hose to a water barrel and snakes it down the hill for several yards where upon it heats up through the day and produces a nice hot indoor shower. But, today it's a little too brisk for an outdoor shower so I will have to make do with an indoor shampoo and sponge bath.

Walking is usually good for my funks so I set off towards the ocean.  Each step is a foot massage in the warm, soft sand.  I pass dozens of different tracks;
snake, fox, coyote, skunk, rabbit, frog.  Porcupine? 
The dunes were certainly hopping last night.  I climb the path up to the fore dune where I'm gobsmacked by the Atlantic, a different perspective from the catbird seat.  The dune grasses wave in the breeze.
You just want to run jump in them.  They remind me of how sea grass undulates in an aquarium.  The rosa rugosa, or salt spray rose bushes are still blooming magenta flowers and are as fragrant as my great aunt's home grown roses.  Rose hips are the size of a jacks ball. I bite into one and it's sweet enough but mealy and full of seeds and vitamin C.  
 I clamber down the sandy cliff to the shore and notice a gang of gray seals swimming along-- horse heads they call them.  One has beached himself and watches me nervously.  The closer I get, the more he scoots.  Soon, he galumphs off into the water. I walk for miles without seeing a single human soul.  The waves are so clear you can see through them.  In the sand I spot a teensy weensy starfish, the size of my pinky fingernail.  It's attached to a small piece of driftwood. I know my friend Jennie will appreciate it as we spent a week out here in 2010 right after her mother died and we found dozens of baby starfish washed up along the tide in the sea grass.  There aren't many shells on Race Point beach. 
Mostly eye-catching rocks.
 I find a baby sand dollar and am anxious to compare it to the Pacific sand dollars I have at home.  Pacific on left. The flower looks different. 

My mom loved the ocean, but she never made it to Race Point.  It's been six months since she passed away and I'm finally beginning to really miss her. The toll of care giving. Her death from dementia was such a "terrible relief" that it's taken this long to actually remember and miss the old mom, the one before the Alzheimer's stole her sweet, loving self. I find an old letter "M" (for Mom or Mary?) washed up on the beach and hope she's thinking about me, too.  

I get a text from my dune friends, Peter and Marianne, inviting me over to their shack, The Grail, for dinner tonight. I met them my first year and we've stayed in touch over the years.  They live in Boston in the winter, but stay out here through the summer and have being doing so for many years.  Both are RISD graduates, very talented artists and introduced me to the fascinating history of the shacks.   I decide to make Curry Vegetable Soup and carry it over in a Ziplock.

The Grail is about a twenty minute walk through the dunes.
When I arrive I find my hosts are packing up for the season. 
Everything gets mouse proofed or removed from those little white-footed scavengers and windows are boarded up.  It always surprises me how much weather these shacks can endure and how much sand just about buries them during the stormy winter.  We pour wine and talk shack politics, aging and catch up with one another as we devour our soup and roasted chicken. Marianne breaks out the vodka and potato chips for dessert and three hours zoom past.  Peter kindly drives me back in his Jeep.  There are more stars than sky.  My little battery operated lantern serves as a beacon inside Euphoria.  Highland Light lighthouse sweeps over the dunes from the opposite direction.  All is well in the Province Lands. 

Saturday, October 24, 2015

Day Two Euphoria October 11


It is blustery and sunny when I wake this morning.  The indoor thermometer reads 67 degrees.  Not too bad given it’s in the 50’s outside.  Last night I dreamed about my dog Judge and a wolverine.  According to an animal totem website, “Wolverine heralds the awakening of passion for life and the ability to absorb all the lessons that come our way.  This passion can be a gift or a curse, depending on how it is used.  One can be a glutton for food (a detriment) or a glutton for knowledge (a benefit).  Wolverine teaches us never to surrender, to pursue what we desire until we reach our goals.” Words to the wise as I continue struggling with this challenging middle grade novel.

Speaking of wolverines, people often ask if it’s scary out here all alone.  Over the years I’ve never felt afraid or threatened.  Well, with the exception of the white-footed field mice and black racer snakes.  They took some getting used to.  But, so far no black racers have been inside the shack and the mice are pretty cute.  Hardy hikers can trek out over a strenuous
sandy path called Snail Road but there are signs requesting they keep their distance from the shacks.  Of course there’s always a few peeking over the dunes or some who just walk right up to the door.  But for the most part they are only curious and respectful.  The past year the Trust has erected a driftwood fence so the Dune Tour isn't staring right into Eurphoria's window. 
It looks pretty spooky looking out the back of the shack, but serves its purpose.  Crazy artists live here. 

I love what Cheryl Strayed says (author of Wild) about being in nature and spending time alone in nature.  

"I really think that being in nature is a basic human need that we have. It gives us perspective because, when you walk into the woods, or walk through the desert or sit by a river, you realize that you're only one thing in the great order of things. … I know for certain that I myself get incredibly bound up in very minor, ridiculous, temporary conundrums. And obviously there's nothing wrong with that. I think we have to get bound up in those things or else we couldn't get our kids to school on time. But if you only live in that realm, you are missing out on something that's essential and illuminating.  Do you think it makes a difference that people undertake journeys alone? 

I think that there is a wonderful thing that can happen if you're with one other person or your family or a group of friends. … You face these challenges together, you see these beautiful things together. It's a shared experience that you forever have that bonds you. I feel like everyone should get to have that experience. I also think that it's really something else to be alone because there is nobody to buffer the experience between you and the world, there is nobody to lean on in hard times, there is nobody to distract you from your loneliness or your thoughts. … But some kind of particular strength rises out of doing it all on your own."


As I mentioned earlier, the jeep road is locked except to those few families who have shacks and to Art’s Dune Tours.  There’s an air horn and a red flag hanging in the rafters if I were to need help.  That’s given I could climb up to get it and hang it outside.  The theory being that Art or some other dune dweller would hear or see it and come check on you.  There’s also spotty cell service from certain dune tops and bunk tops as well as a notebook listing Euphoria’s coordinates if one needed to give that info to the Coast Guard and/or Park Service-- if one could only reach the Coast Guard/Park Service.     

While preparing a delicious iron skillet breakfast I survey the galley for provisions.  The camp toaster is my favorite apparatus pictured here.  


 I actually packed one but Euphoria is fairly well stocked and already had one.  There’s even a vintage 70’s orange soup pot that will be perfect for curry vegetable soup later on.  All of the shacks are special, but this one seems to have some extra touches that make it even more charming. For instance, the paper towel rack has a fishing sinker weight that keeps the towels from blowing. 



The roof shingle nails that came through the ceiling are creatively concealed with wine corks. 


And someone has hung an old snail fossil on the door and a rusty nameplate.  




I’ve seen two marsh hawks fly over and hundreds of tree swallows gathering the last berries of the season.  After breakfast I go in search of the cranberry bogs scattered in the Province Lands. 




I pass the compass grass which gets its name from the way the wind causes the grass to swirl around in perfect circles like the way an old-fashioned drawing compass works. 



It’s amazing what grows in sand.  The cranberries are plentiful and ripe.  I snitch pocketfuls. 




They say you can dig a hole here and quickly reach water, which is what the coyotes do when they get thirsty.  Red foxes have actually taken over since the coyote is no longer protected here.  One night in town while walking back to my guesthouse, I ran into a fox who was much more intent on catching mice than paying attention to me.  We walked along for several yards together.  At the Provincetown Pilgrim’s Monument Museum a male kit curls up right outside the door every day at 4pm. He seems to like posing for the cameras.


I can already tell the week is going to zoom by.  The days feel shorter in the northeast and this time I only have the shack for one week.  Last year, I lucked out and had two weeks because someone cancelled at the last moment.  Now for that novel I came here to work on…




Friday, October 23, 2015

Day One in Euphoria



This was my first stay at Euphoria, a 16x12 foot dune shack on the outer shore of the Cape Cod National Seashore.  However, it was my seventh time to stay in a dune shack, an addiction that started August 2008 when I was awarded my first artist-in-residency at a roomier shack known as C-Scape. 


It all began one afternoon while I was browsing the travel section of the Austin Public Library and ran across the poet Cynthia Huntington’s book, The Salt House.  She had spent three summers in Euphoria with her then artist husband. I took the book home and devoured it.  The shacks are now on the National Historic District Registry: one, because over the years artists and writers like Eugene O’Neill, e.e. Cummings, Norman Mailer, Tennessee Williams, Mary Oliver, Annie Dillard, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem deKooning all created in them, and two, because they’ve been there since the early 1900’s and have stories to tell.  After reading The Salt House, I started googling the historic shacks and discovered a blog about an artist-in-resident who had spent time in one.  I contacted Sue Foss, a talented NYC artist.  She was so enthusiastic and generous with her time, explaining how to go about applying for a residency.  I kept an ad for Provincetown, Massachusetts tacked to my writer’s desk of a woman in front of a shack admiring the Atlantic.  I pretty much stared at this ad for months, manifesting my dream. 

As luck would have it, I applied, submitting examples of my paintings and received a call that spring informing me that I had been accepted for a three-week residency. In August, 2008 I packed my SUV to the gills with art supplies, birch board to paint on, camping gear, 15 gallons of water, and set off for a stretched out week-long drive from Austin to Provincetown, MA.  Coincidentally, Sue and I both ended up winning residencies for separate shacks and overlapped that summer. This was an added plus since she could show me the ropes and all the best places to eat between Wellfleet and Provincetown. If I hadn’t had to walk up and down through loose sand for 45 minutes to the Visitor Center to charge my camera and then another 45 minutes into town because I was lonely, I would’ve gained ten pounds that month from all the deliciousness we consumed.     

Since then, I’ve been blessed to receive three more artist-in-residencies and have won a week here and there at what the non-profits call, “the lottery,” as well as getting to stay at friends’ shacks. 

Cut to 2015. 

Day One, Saturday 10 October

After spending four nights on Nantucket with my old childhood friend’s family I flew into Provincetown on Cape Air.  This flight in a Cessna twin engine always takes me back to a childhood spent in our Piper Comanche, 99 Papa.  My dad was a pilot during the Second World War and a fine one at that.  He talked my mom into getting a single engine airplane when I was four and we spent just about every Sunday buzzing around Central Texas.  I had no idea at the time how lucky I was to grow up in an airplane.  Summer vacations were spent in Southern Californa, where my dad had been stationed.  He loved CA because everything grew there and being a florist that was his Disneyland.  It took about seven hours to fly from Austin to San Diego with one stop in Phoenix for a potty break.  As an only child, I was often lonely on vacations and one year talked my parents into taking that old childhood friend with me. Fran and I hunkered down in the back-- she claims I took up most of the seat, but I maintain that’s because she grew up in a big family and had to fight for her real estate.  Interestingly, I never got the bug to take flying lessons and even developed a fear of flying in my early twenties, but obviously that was  conquered now that I'm able to tolerate the "mosquito fleet" of Cape Air.

A volunteer with the Peaked Hill Trust, which is the non-profit that awarded me the residency this summer, picked me up in a four-wheel drive truck and drove me over the dunes to Euphoria.  The truck tires are deflated in order to negotiate the sandy jeep trail.  She honked as we chugged up a dune that’s steep as San Francisco’s Hyde Street to warn any oncoming traffic. This road is locked and only open to shack dwellers and Art’s Dune Tours.  Not just anyone can drive out there which is comforting.  After about 20 minutes of slipping and sliding through the deserted Province Lands we arrived at a tiny shack perched on stilts overlooking the Atlantic. 

I received an overview of the wood burning stove, the ancient two-burner cook stove, propane refrigerator, the old-fashioned wood yoke (if I chose to use it) for retrieving water and the Aqua Rain filter. I followed Jody down the hill for a water pump refresher course since I was a relatively seasoned shack dweller. She informed me that the water had been tested but that it contains a lot of iron so it’s the color of a football.  I’ve brought about 7 gallons of drinking water, thank goodness.  The hand pump usually needs priming but since they’ve had rain recently, it wasn’t necessary.  Ice-cold water gurgled out as soon as she lifted the handle.

I had my choice of unfiltered burnt orange water, filtered water or drinking water.  Back at the shack, about a dozen plastic water containers neatly line the shelf, all labeled, as to which is which. I used the “red” water for boiling pasta or dishwashing and the filtered for coffee and tea drinking.  My store bought water I saved for just drinking since there’s a distinct iron-y flavor to the pumped water.  There was a small shelf over the dry sink where two of these large 2.5-gallon containers fit, one unfiltered, one pure for drinking. 
It’s almost like having a real tap! One thing’s for sure, you become very adept at conserving water just to keep from having to make so many trudges down to the pump. 

We also went over the privy procedures.  It’s a compost toilet with a covered bucket of popcorn in one corner that’s used to help the real compost do its thing—you toss in one scoop per poop. Toilet paper was secured in a plastic coffee container with lid otherwise the mice would steal it and make nests. And of course, there was the 2015 Farmer’s Almanac hanging by a string for one’s viewing pleasure.  

After my orientation Jody left me carless and I was stuck with myself in a shack with the nearest shack neighbor still visible but about a quarter mile off the horizon. Sunset on that first Saturday was at 6:04 pm.  I still had plenty of daylight to unpack and explore the beach, which was 550 yards away. 

I chose the top bunk since it offered a better view of the ocean.  Pillows and blankets were included. My sleeping bag that kept me toasty 28 years ago on a Nepal trek, served as bedding on the comfortable enough, mattress.  I hung my Coleman battery lantern from the rafter and headlamp on a nail. The shack was amazingly tight even though it's not insulated.  It was much warmer than the last shack I stayed in that required sleeping with a hot water bottle, long johns, beanie and keeping the wood burning fire stoked.  I brought bundles of wood just in case and way more than I could ever eat, even shipping boxes of Trader Joe’s nuts, almond milk, chicken stock, granola, rice, pasta, beer and extra batteries from California. 

I wandered up and over the hill to a cleft in the fore dune to see if there was still a cliff to negotiate to the beach as there was last year. I’m pleasantly surprised to see that the drop off is not as severe so I shuffled down in my Crocs to the sea. There was not a soul to be found except a couple of curious gray seals looking at me looking at them. 

Because the Cape is like a flexed arm that sticks 30 miles out to sea, the light reflected from all that water (and therefore the colors) are stunning-- one reason Provincetown is known as the oldest art colony in the country.  Painters have been coming here for decades to capture this magic. I spent the rest of my daylight hours photographing and
watching the gulls’ Alpen glow bellies as they retreated to their nightly refuge in the dunes.

Dinner was Portuguese kale soup that I brought from town and a glass of Cabernet.  I lit the oil lamps and watched my reflection slowly materialize in the old paned window as darkness set in. 

The wind whipping up around Euphoria caused her to tremble. For a moment I thought, “Earthquake,” but that’s the Californian in me. The rumbling ocean was so soothing.  I slept better than I have in over two years.                      



Monday, October 5, 2015

Dune Shack Autumn

I'm off to the Euphoria dune shack this coming Saturday.  I won't have much of a power source except for a Brookstone charger that is supposed to re-charge my phone eight times.  The shack has no electricity or running water.  It does have an outhouse and hand pump for water.  A truck will drop me off with all my stuff.  If I want to go somewhere it's by foot over lots of loose sand.  This will be my fifth stint in a shack aside from a couple I've stayed in that belong to friends.  Euphoria is teeny, but it looks out over the Atlantic.  Stay tuned!

* Excerpt from "Building Provincetown, The Book" by David W. Dunlap
     Cape Cod National Seashore | Euphoria (Shack 7)
     Euphoria is the larger of two shacks that belonged to the writer and preservationist Hazel
     Hawthorne Werner — if the adjective “larger” can be applied to a 16-by-12-foot structure. It was
     built around 1930, apparently by the coast guardsman Louis “Spucky” Silva, who also built
     Thalassa. Werner, the author of The Salt House, arrived in the 1920s, pursuing a vision she’d had
     of “a place by the ocean, where you could take a blanket and sleep on the beach and there was
     nobody around.” She acquired Euphoria in the early 1940s. For three summers, the writer
     Cynthia Huntington and her husband, the artist Bert Yarborough, rented Euphoria. Huntington
     described the last of these summers in her own The Salt House, a collection of lovely essays
     published in 1999. Euphoria is now maintained and managed by the Peaked Hill Trust.
 Photo by Kerri Schmidt