Cape Cod views.

I am staying, during my sojourn on the Cape, at what must surely be one of its most run-down motels. This is entirely my fault. I was so nervous about coming here that though I signed up for my workshop back in March, I didn't get a room for myself until July.

So I found a place appropriately named the Outer Reach. Maybe I chose it because of its name. Because of its name and the fact that it was about half the price of the other motels I looked into.

The one thing the Outer Reach has going for it is its view. It is built into the Cape Cod National Seashore, and it's hard to think you'd find a more spectacular location, even if you didn't wait til July to look for one.

My ten-foot-square cottage is on a high bluff half a mile from the bay. The houses on the bay, especially when I get up in the early morning and throw my dark blue shades open, have a perfect Edward Hopper light on them. If you don't know what that means, you really shouldn't be reading this.

I know Hopper was here almost a century ago. He came for the solitude. The beauty of a lonely home standing on a windswept hill. And he came for the light.

Walker Evans, the great photographer was here too. Taking interior views in 1930 that remind me of my motel in 2018. 

Though it's not as clean as I wish it were, and they don't replace the little bottles of shampoo when you run out, you could do worse than stay in a Walker Evans room with an Edward Hopper view.