Looking for New England

With its intriguing history, wild natural beauty and excellent food and drink, Cape Cod’s appeal is all-embracing

- By Guy Dimond

A lengthy spit of sand and hollows jutting into the Atlantic, Cape Cod has long been a place of ebb and flow. The landscape itself seems transient, the shores of breezy dunes and freshwater kettle ponds constantly shifting their boundaries. Created from piles of glacial moraine as the last ice sheet receded, its days are numbered; it now has less than 5,000 years to go before the ocean consumes it.

But right now, it’s New England’s vacation destination for visitors of all stripes – non-stop partying weekenders from Boston and New York, beachcombing families from New England, and plutocrats and presidents who jet in from Washington to their compounds, a tradition begun by the Kennedys. Cape Cod and its two islands – Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket – is a place where you come to meet people, but also to escape; to eat the seaside dishes our grandparents ate, but also to push out the boat with some cutting-edge cuisine.

Most striking of all, though, is the light and the scenery; mile after mile of white sand beaches, backed by the bleached-bone white of clapboard houses and weathered cedar shingles. Eventually you get to Provincetown at the very tip, where the Mayflower first landed before moving on and leaving it for the Nauset Indians.