Adam Zappa

Cape Cod 2021, Life on the Edge

Show of hands, please – who wants the window on car rides, goes for an aisle seat in the theatre? Me too! That identifies us as the brave people, the ones who enjoy life on the edge. (Click to enlarge/slideshow)

Instead of peering down the rabbit hole of psycho-genetics, I’m content to declare that my inner-edgieness is a birth-effect, the natural result of being born on the edge – the southeast edge of Lake Ontario, in a place that once also graced the northwest edge of these United States.

The shore of that lake would be the locale of most summertime adventure, all the way until 1960, when I was eleven and my family vacationed on Cape Cod, which is as edgy a place as you could imagine!

Cape Cod Canal boatspotting, August 2021; Dave Read photo.

This is the northern terminus of the Cape Cod Canal, in Sandwich, home also to the Shawme-Crowell state park. Where I’ve parked my chair is the last patch of shade before the Canary Islands!

Peeskawso Peak, Monument Mountain, July, 2021

Matthew and I visited the ancient and the brand new at the same time, Saturday July 24, 2021 when we summited* Monument Mountain on the northern outskirts of Great Barrington, MA. With a contour as identifiable as Mount Greylock’s, Monument Mountain is about as ancient a thing as you’ll find in the broader neighborhood of the Berkshires. (*At my age, to ascend higher than a few flights of stairs, without a nap break, constitutes a summiting.)

Matt on Monument Mountain, the Berkshires, July 2021; Dave Read photo.

And now it’s own most distinguishing characteristic, which was called Squaw Peak for at least a century and a half, has been re-branded as Peeskawso Peak, in a token nod of apology to the Mohican people, who are due much more from the descendants of the Williams family that dispossed them of so much of their land and forced their emigration to Wisconsin. (Yes, same Williams as set up the town and college).

Poet Dave Read takes the waters at the literary Lourdes of the Berkshires. Matt Lavalette photo.

When I got wind of the re-branding, I wrote this poem, to replace this one.

Peeskawso Peak

Come along William Culllen Bryant,
let us beckon Melville, Hawthorne to convene,
along with Umpachanee and Konkapot – all the best

Shall meet at Monument Mountain, and follow
Mohican Monument Trail, through the seasons
of the soul, to Peeskawso* Peak, and there to rest.

Dave Read

*Mohican for “virtuous woman.”

Read “Monument Mountain,”, by William Culllen Bryant.

Read good books club at Fair Haven, June 2021

Kate and Mike Halpin, and Caitlin and me convened the first gathering of the book club and never said a word about Harper Lee books, the conversation was so good! It was a beautiful day, rain free in an otherwise rainy week.

This shows that, while un-civil war tears at the fabric of the nation, relatives can travel to Fair Haven from Virginia, Massachusetts, and nearby Fulton – primarily for the joy of family, secondarily for chin-wagging on an Olympian level, and thirdly to partake of picnic cuisine!

This gathering took place a few days before Caitlin’s 50th birthday, which was my father’s 106th – July 2. That is the day the Declaration of Independence was approved by 12 of the 13 colonies – New York hadn’t made up her mind, yet!

These pictures (click ’em) show that there is plenty of room for you and your crew next time!

And here, Caitlin captures a sublime sunset from the Bluff the night beofre: