Last Sunday, after the snow had melted and more water had come down in a day of rain, Capaum Pond was overflowing into Nantucket Sound. It often is, but usually as just a trickle of tea-colored water that waxes and wanes and is sometimes pushed back resolutely by high tide. This freshet was more than I’d ever seen. And with the watertable supercharged, it obviously continued to flow... 
On Monday, about 18 hours later, it was almost impassable. Capaum Pond was once open to the sea as a little bay. It was where the first European settlers set up their town, called Sherburne, after buying the island in 1659. Nantucket was legally part of New York colony until 1692.
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D'oh! I just took a good look at that piece of wood in the newly cut channel. It's a staircase. The cliff along the north shore -- both to the east and west of this spot -- is bounded with them, rising up to palaces (the Bidens spent T-day on the island at the second or third home of an Ambassafunder up there), or less frequently, modest beach shacks. Either way, the sea always wins, whittling away the land, moving it down-current, ripping out the works of foolish mortals.
Refreshing!
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