On a cool, breezy day in mid March I walked about a mile and a half south on the jeep road from the end of the Nauset Beach parking lot in East Orleans. My goal was Pochet Island. Access is across a narrow wooden bridge over a creek in the marsh which separates the island from the beach.
Four wheel drive vehicles can navigate the jeep trail and the bridge to travel on a few cart paths on the island. Hikers are welcome to walk back in time through the watery tide-sensitive approach to Pochet.
The handful of summer homes and cottages were all boarded against the winter winds. There does not appear to be any electrical service. The largest home, labeled "new house" is perched on a hill fronted by open fields. I arrived about noon and sat on the porch to escape the northwest breeze and absorb some grudging warmth from a hazy sun mostly obscured by high clouds.
The views to the ocean are expansive. The rustic appearance of the homestead, perfectly placed in a rolling rural landscape, evoke sensations of a simpler time, lost ages ago.
I had to remind myself while eating my modest brown bag lunch that this was not a pleasant dream but an actual idyllic enclave just beyond the jagged edge of our electronic, mechanized age.
Public access to groomed paths is part of a Conservation Restriction agreement made between residents and the National Park Service in 1975.
A small forest pond lies in the center of a maze of thickets.
The views to the south and west over Pleasant Bay and on to Chatham are spectacular.
After several hours of pensive strolling, I left behind this little piece of paradise with regret but comforted in the knowledge that places as wonderful as Pochet still exist.
