As kids, we were thrilled by the freedom a small town afforded. We ran wild on the beach, especially when the tide at the harbor receded to the horizon. We dug quahogs in muck that stuck to our feet, and climbed sand dunes that towered as tall as anything we had ever seen. On Wednesday nights, families gathered in the parking lot beside Town Hall for intergenerational square dancing, which was followed by soft-serve ice cream at the pier or at P.J.’s on the highway.
In Wellfleet, we swam in crystal-clear spring-fed ponds and learned to body surf in the steel-blue Atlantic on the outer beaches. At night, warmed by a bonfire, we huddled at the bay beneath blankets and the Milky Way, singing songs until the flames faded into glowing embers and our parents prodded us back to our pine-paneled cottages and into bed.
The next morning, we would get up and do it all over again.
This may sound like an idyllic reminiscence of childhood (and it is), but the special thing about Wellfleet is that much remains the same. Thanks to the creation of the Cape Cod National Seashore in 1961, over 60 percent of the beaches and woodlands remain undeveloped. Sure, the beaches are more crowded, and the penny candy store burned down, never to be rebuilt. And though the square dance has relocated from town to the pier, it still goes on like clockwork every Wednesday evening at 6:30.
Even the architecture is much the same, especially in the historic center and along the harbor on Mayo Beach where cottages have been lovingly restored. On Main Street, the 19th-century Congregational and Methodist churches sit almost side by side, their white clapboard exteriors reflecting the bright Cape light. The bell at the Congregational church still rings “ship’s time’’ at half-hour intervals, a system I proudly mastered as a child, and still recall.
