Quote of the Day:
Though dangerous to seafarers, Point Judith appears tame on ordinary occasions. The surrounding land is flat, sandy, and nearly treeless. Only when high winds roll up huge breakers does the Point impress landlubbers with its threatening character. - Rhode Island: A Guide to the Smallest State, Federal Writers Project

Journal of a Sabbatical

January 18, 1999

downpour

Lightning flashed when I kissed Nancy goodnight. How often does that happen in real non-metaphorical life?

The Lawrence Eagle Tribune article about the Thursday/Friday/Saturday storm mentioned thunder as about the only thing we hadn't had yet:

''It's been a crazy storm,'' said Haverhill Department of Public Works foreman Peter Boisselle, who has been plowing roads in that Massachusetts city for 15 years. ''You had every element out there except thunder. It was fine with six inches of snow. But then it started changing and (everything) broke loose.''

Well today we got that too. Thunder and lightning. A real New England weather sort of day.

When we set off for South County in the morning, we were hoping the rain would hold off until later. It didn't. The thunder and lightning did, but not the rain. That didn't stop us from taking a walk on Carpenter's Beach among the cobbles. Piles and piles of cobbles, brightly colored in the rain and the incoming surf made the whole beach look like an abstract mosaic. I've never seen so many skate egg cases on one beach, either. They were lined up along the edges of the mounds of cobbles. The only other person on the beach was a man with a metal detector looking for buried treasure. He didn't find any.

When the rain and the tide drove us off Carpenter's Beach, we drove up to the Point Judith Lighthouse. By this time the wind had picked up and it was raining more steadily. The sea and the sky sort of merged with each other into a gray mass, that was oddly exhilarating instead of depressing. The wind started to whip up some surf, turning it into one of those days when "the Point [does] impress landlubbers with its threatening character". The first time I ever saw Point Judith was during a summer storm when it was raining too hard for Mom and Dad to keep us dry and entertained in the campground at Burlingame. Would you want to be cooped up in canvas tent with six children in the rain? Anyway, I must have been in my early teens when we drove around South County looking at the surf. It made a big impression on all of us. Even more than the treat of fried clams in Galilee. Today felt somehow the same - a perfectly ordinary place becoming something larger and more mystical.

One lone red-breasted merganser took on the surf. One herring gull sat on a rock staring intently at the sea. There were no other birds in evidence. We were starting to get cold and wet and sought lunch and coffee in Galilee. One clam place was open for lunch 'til three and we got there at 2:40. Nancy had fish and chips while I had a grilled cheese sandwich and fries with my coffee. We watched the Block Island ferry leave and two fishing boats come in. A black cat sat on the restaurant's deck eating fish from a cardboard container.