THE CAPE!

As you stroll through the streets of Cape May New Jersey, at the very southern tip of the state, you get into a time warp, that can free your imagination into thinking anything you want as a member of pre and early 20^th Century Cape May!

The streets are old and tree covered, and on a summer’s day, they shelter one from the heat of the midday sun, encouraging you to hear the voices and sounds that at one time passed through the town and made time stand still.

I would love to come here just to write a novel of historical content, I could easily fill it with characters I would image lived here and work or played along the avenues and shores that make up this great little city.

The building themselves, either the commercial or private homes all retain their flavor from so long ago, the streets whisper the events that occurred as I would imagine them of so long ago.

There is an essence, an aura of things past that seems so sacred and defined, untouched by modern man, yet so respected to last another hundred years. When the tourists are gone, a peace settles over it and life becomes serene and almost hallowed. My presence seems an intrusion to what is dormant and sublime.

As I gaze along the avenues and streets, I see the churches and old stores, so influenced by the sea, it echoes stories I don’t understand, but leave me with a curiosity. I look and see trees hundreds of years old, breaking through the concrete walks and they say: “Stranger, what stories I could tell you, what events you have not witnessed, what intrigue you have missed, can you stop a while and listen?

I can see an old sailor walking down one of the streets, maybe a pea coat and cap, and a pipe tilted in his mouth, his head bent down deep in the trials he witnessed at sea,  maybe his wife and child, waiting at a threshold, anxious to see their man again after his time away on the blue waves of the deep.

Sometimes I sit on the porch and look out through the trees, and the sunlight filters through, touching my face in splashes of sunlight, old homes sitting serenely and in a quiet stateliness, bearing testimony to life here 100 years ago.

The wind will rise from the ocean and carry the salt air across my path, and I remember that like the wind everything here on earth is temporary, for even the strongest wind dies, and so I will leave here and dream of coming back once more, just like the wind.