April is a cool month in Cape Cod. The tourists haven't thronged the peninsula. The skys are frequently overcast. Few autos stop to visit the Nauset Light House, where in 1879 the first trans-Atlantic undersea cable began, terminating in France.

Although the weathervane below wasn't part of the Penneman mansion, perhaps it should have been. Penneman went from crewman to shipowner, amassing a sizeable fortune in the whaling business. A sea voyage in search of whales could take years, and Penniman sometimes brought his family along.

SAND, SAND, SAND:

The Penneman mansion sat atop a hill overlooking the water.

This vintage home of Capt. Judah Eldridge Nickerson ("Schooners-Sloops-Yachts"), which dates to 1848, is not so exhalted, but still on high ground — in this case, sand. Much, if not most of the cape, is sand dune.
This house was being supported by massive beams so that a contractor could finally give it a basement.

The cape is teeming with wildlife: Flocks of red wing blackbirds near the seashore, rabbits,a heron that is almost lost in the bare brush of the estuary, pictured below.

To the lower right is the boardwalk of the Red Maple Swamp (or was it the Cedar Swamp? The signs were confusing), which passes the troll on the lower left, and a brilliant patch of moss growing at the base of a tree rising from the water.