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How to Walk In Cape Cod Sand

“I was told,” wrote Nat Willis, the poet who visited the Cape in 1849, “that the Cape people have a peculiar step for the sand, laying down the flat of the while foot and bending the knee, and not the ankle, to advance. The utility of larger feet must, of course, make them a beauty in so practical a place as Provincetown; but, as well as I could see, under the petticoats I chanced to meet, the feet of the ladies were of the usual dimensions.”

Long after this, Willis visited the Cape once more at a time when there was a plank sidewalk in Provincetown, and he thus could catch an occasional glimpse of feet, and even of ankles.

Nancy Paine Smith, the writer on Provincetown, once wrote, “They do say that Cape Cod girls know the trick of walking in the sand without filling their shoes. Try this, ye off-islanders. Lift your feet high, toe in a bit, and put your feet down flat.”

Well, I tried it and got both shoes full of sand just the same.

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