I sat in the dark with two friends on the wet sand at Newcomb Hollow Beach in Wellfleet on the evening of July 4th. To our left, fireworks lit up the fog in red, green, and gold flashes until a thick mist rolled down the dunes, turning the flashes into something more like puffs. We couldn’t see more than two feet in front of our faces.
Suddenly, like something out of a psychological thriller, faint cries for help rose from our right. The mist completely obscured their source. I imagined a medical emergency, a near-drowning, a poor soul lost in the swirling fog. With a cohort of about five strangers, we hustled to the rescue.
The crier: a woman with a big black lab who refused to budge.
“Please tell those people to shut it down,” she said, blaming the fireworks for the dog’s recalcitrance. “Tell them I’m an old lady. That will inspire respect. And terror.”
While the five strangers went to “shut it down,” my friend and I coaxed the dog (and her owner) up the dunes to the safety of the parking lot.
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