As regular readers of this blog are well aware, I love spending time on Cape Cod.
And I am not alone in this sentiment.
In recent years the population of seals on Cape Cod has risen significantly.
According to the web site of the Center For Coastal Studies in Provincetown, two kinds of seals — harbor and gray — live on the Cape year-round.
Three other species — harp, hooded, and ring seals — can also be spotted on Cape Cod, although they give birth in Canada and Greenland.
I am pretty sure it is gray seals who share the beach in North Truro with us human beings.
Head Of The Meadow beach, near where I camp with family members each summer, is home to hundreds of seals.
You can click here to read a recent story — with great photos — about this particular community of seals.
It confirms what we have noticed — that within the past ten years, the number of seals sharing this beach has increased substantially!
At low tide they gather in large communities on the sandbars and soak up the sun.
Then at high tide everyone is back in the water, swimming up and down the shoreline in search of food.
When I am learning new songs, I usually record them as accurately as possible with pianist Doug Hammer at his studio in Lynn, MA.
Then I load piano-vocal and just-piano versions onto my iPod — and walk and sing for hours, memorizing lyrics while musing about the story being told in the song…
And beaches are great places to walk and sing.
Seals often will swim along the shore while I am walking — their heads popping up through the surface of the water at regular intervals.
Sometimes a bunch of them will gather and watch/listen if I stop and sing in one place for a while.
They are curious beings.
On clear nights, I sometimes leave the campground and head back to the beach in order to walk and sing and revel in a truly starry sky.
Where I live — just outside of Boston — there’s a lot of light pollution.
But on the outer Cape — away from buildings and streetlights and cars — the skies remain awe-inspiring.
I wrote the song (in the player at the beginning of this blog post) a couple of summer ago… and recorded it with Doug a few weeks ago at his studio north of Boston.
It was an alternative pick for a Valentine’s-themed blog post.
But since February is not quite over, I have decided to share it in this seal-themed blog post instead.
Since I burn easily, I almost never go to the beach during peak sun hours.
My routine is to stay at the campground during the day — when almost all of the humans have gone to the beach — and write songs.
I sit in a very large tent with my ukulele and a rhyming dictionary and a little digital recorder and a laptop computer and bags of song ideas which I have jotted down over the years.
I listen to the birds and the chipmunks and the crickets and the cicadas.
Then in the late afternoon I walk down a long path through a wonderful pine forest to the beach.
In addition to swimming in very shallow water along the shore — because the booming seal population has also encouraged a healthy population of great white sharks to visit the outer Cape — I sometimes stretch and do a little yoga.
As do the seals…
While we human beings dither about climate change — and carry viruses around the world due to our obsession with international travel — and vote for political candidates who may or may not care one iota for their constituents — I am strangely reassured to think about the seals.
And the moon.
And the stars.
And the sea.
Thank you to all of the photographers who share their great photos at Pixabay.
And to the seals and other wildlife who share the Cape with us human beings.
And to the North Of Highland Campground for staying in business year after year.
And to my family who choose to camp together for two weeks each summer.