One of the reasons I so love living where I live is that I am so close to the Cape Cod Canal. I love that body of water. You can’t swim in it, but if you are lucky enough to have a boat you can trail along the calm water from Buzzards Bay to Sandwich and enjoy the beauty from the deck. I am not so lucky as to have a boat but I really don’t mind. I am content to walk along the paved service road and get my fix.

My love affair with the canal started about 25 years ago. We used to camp at Bourne Scenic Park and spent hours walking through the park and down to the water. With a cooler and a couple of chairs we’d spend the day people watching, boat watching, napping and leaving the world behind. Once the kids came we’d take them down to the base of the Bourne Bridge at low tide and look for sea creatures like stoic starfish and scuttling crabs. We’d collect rocks and fill the sand bucket with our treasures. The living creatures we always put back but the rocks and stones became part of our family history.

As the kids got older we’d bike from one end of the canal to the other. They would bring their friends to camp with us. Campfires, s’mores, rummy, word games, chess, scrabble – our days and evenings were spent in a contented, albeit noisy and boisterous, haze. Nobody looked at the clock. Trips to the camp store were frequent culminating in a last walk down to get ice cream after supper. Bedtimes were random. Breakfast was sumptuous. It was truly heaven.

Nowadays the kids have grown. We’ve sold the camper. But I still find the canal to be a place of solace and joy. It can be cool and windy, sometimes it’s downright raw, but it doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t matter what season it is. This past winter I witnessed a rare sight when the canal was covered with ice floes. I had to get some pictures of that. It doesn’t happen all that often. Some mornings the fog is so thick you can’t even see the water. Some mornings it is so crystal clear that the sunlight dancing off the diamond-tipped waves is so brilliant you have to look away for a minute. In any case there are not many places I’d rather be.

One morning this spring I was taking a walk along the canal. The fog was a living thing blanketing the water in vaporous mists and the sky looked like rain. The bridges were as ghosts swirling in these mists. One moment there they were, the next simply vanished. The swoosh of ducks landing in the water made an eerie sound as you couldn’t see them in the fog. Although the campground was not yet open the scent of wood smoke from last fall lingers, a promise for the coming season. I walked a couple of miles that morning, breathing in the sweet salt air, the elixir of life. I watched the water almost stop moving as the tide began to turn. Watched a great blue heron, prehistoric in its beauty and form, stalk its breakfast with quiet determination. It was cool and I pulled my sweatshirt closer and began to walk a little faster. The air had changed. And just as I got to my car it began to rain. All I could do was smile.