It was a big mistake to forego our Cape Cod beach vacation this year.  I’d reasoned that we were going on two overseas vacations this year, and we are not made of money.

But the daily disasters keep piling up, and my back aches from the 24/7 tension, and then the capper: today I read a  Verlyn Klinkenborg-style essay in The New York Times about the author’s unplugged vacation on Long Pond, in Belgrade Lakes, Maine (see photo above).

Ah, Long Pond.  Many years ago, when I was a twenty-year old Bronx primitive, I vacationed there with a school friend.  It was my first plane ride, LGA to Augusta.  Less than an hour, as I recall.  We rented an AMC Ambassador, and drove to Castle Island Camps.

We had use of a fourteen foot outboard, with a ten horsepower motor.  We fished for large mouth bass.  We ate them for dinner, with corn, salad.  We had blueberry pie with vanilla ice cream for dessert.  After our evening meal, we repaired to the main house “living room” and sipped Jack Daniels from paper cups.  We were far from the war, from the draft, from the grit and daily danger of NYC life in the early seventies.

Those who remember those days as some sort of golden era are very much mistaken.

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Fast forward forty-five years. Cape Cod offered similar respite, albeit far less spartan.  Our rented house was deluxe, the appointments sublime.  We made new friends, new memories.  Lobsters, grilled steaks, fresh corn, all roasted on a grill large enough to host a Texas bbq.

We watched kids fish for fluke from the jetty.  We watched neighbors hilariously try their luck on paddle boards, with varying degrees of success.  We watched a wounded sandpiper deal with its bad leg, nibbling along the shore with his mates.  That gimpy sandpiper returned to our beach, yards from our door, every morning and evening.  One leg was bent at a forty-five degree angle and he hopped about with determination.  I’d watch him while lazing in the New England summer sun.  At first, I was sad for the little guy, hobbled.  I thought: if something happened to his other leg, he was done.  Done! Then, I realized how brave he was, how he coped with the hand he was dealt.  His buddies pecked at the sand with him and never left him behind.

It was a big mistake.  We should have taken the house again.

You can learn a lot while doing nothing.