The seasons are changing rapidly on the Massachusetts North Shore, and you find yourself trying to rein in the metamorphosis – not yet ready to give up the days of summer without a fight. The cool air, the fog, and insistent clouds are all signs that we will soon be enveloped by the glories of fall. I say “glories” because fall truly is the bellweather season of New England.

Just a couple of weeks ago TC and I had gone to Good Harbor Beach in Gloucester: she to swim and I to walk. We went at the golden hours six to eight. Named “golden” not just because of the sunset but because one doesn’t have to pay the usurious parking fee! Unfortunately on that evening there were ambulances, police, and rescue boats in the harbor. I suspect there was a missing swimmer, and this weighed heavily on our minds.

As the sun set, thunder clouds moved in, huge monstrous clouds. Ultimately, it was the first serious rain that we have seen all summer. It was the kind of storm that we used to see in NYC, when I was a child. These are the storms of the New England coast painted by Winslow Homer, or classical and allegorical storms like that painted by Pierre-Auguste Cot (1880), which always seem to include gossamer clad wood nymphs – go figure! I have never seen a wood nymph, gossamer clad or oterwise. Anyway, Figure 1 is an image that I took just before the deluge and chaos. I watched the storm across Pigeon Cove in Rockport, where the lightening seemed to strike the same point multiple times, chasing away the cliche that lightening never strikes the same place twice!