Cranberries on the Cape : My wife and I had often visited Cape Cod together but never on Thanksgiving. Now I would go alone

I knew in mid-October that I would be alone for Thanksgiving. I didn’t wish it to be; I had had hopes that our marriage could be saved, that love and sanity would prevail and that once again we would sit down with family for the traditional feast in Rhode Island. But, after all the years, it was not to be. To escape gloom, the odd-man-out would have to travel.

The Masai tribesmen of East Africa believe that when a lion is wounded, he will walk for miles by night to find one of his old beds--a solitary, painful search for peace. I knew where my Thanksgiving hideaway would logically be--an old bed I remember and love; also a place with strong anecdotal, if not historic, ties to this most American of holidays. My wife and I had often visited Cape Cod together but never on Thanksgiving. Now I would go alone--and discover that for a growing band of present-day Pilgrims the Cape has become the ritual place to observe this Colonial-style occasion.

Yes, I know: The first Thanksgiving was celebrated not on Cape Cod but at Plymouth, Mass. The mythology of the holiday is flexible; and, anyway, before the digging of the Cape Cod Canal (1909) defined beyond dispute the boundary of this most famous of glacial gravel banks, Plymouth was thought of as a part of the Cape as often as it was considered part of the mainland.

I drove through Rhode Island at dusk on Thanksgiving Eve, passing our usual exit and pressing onward. Providence was ahead, then Interstate 195 arching off to the right in the direction of Cape Cod--the road to saltwater taffy and basket shops and thousands of furiously spinning lawn ornaments in the forms of windmills and flying geese.

I passed all the familiar landmarks: the canal-spanning old Bourne railroad bridge--a ghostly, Victorian latticework tonight; the favorite “scenic overlooks” where we used to stretch our legs; the Sunoco station where we always stopped for gas; the site of the “leaning tower of pizza,” now gone.

It was black night when I drove over the Sagamore Bridge and arrived, geographically, on the Cape. What an exciting frontier crossing that used to be! Tonight, it was like entering a familiar room in the dark. I didn’t need a light; I knew where everything was.

The village roadsides swirled with dry leaves. Tall tree trunks and saltbox houses picketed by white fences crowded close on each side. Then, at the center of town, a white, Christopher Wren-style church steeple, floodlighted, and framed by the silver filigree of bare branches, spindled the dark sky.

There had better be a cozy New England inn at the end of this journey, I thought wryly--and there was, in Sandwich, only a few miles from the canal. The Dan’l Webster Inn stands on a spot where Colonial roadhouses welcomed travelers (no doubt on the eve of other Thanksgivings) and wherein old Daniel himself kept a room permanently reserved for 30 years.

Within, there was warmth and hospitality; candlelight and piled up pumpkins; the smell of spicy things baking; baskets of nuts; McIntosh apples mingled with Indian corn; a staff dressed in Early American costumes--long dresses, dust bonnets, aprons and black stockings. A fire burned quietly in the dining room, and an old oil portrait of Daniel Webster looked down upon the guests. In a glass case were some antique postcards of the original 1692 inn, pieces of scrimshaw and a pair of Webster’s small, spidery spectacles that he somehow left behind.

The Devil’n Dan Tavern was already crowded, and all the inn’s 42 rooms were booked for the holiday: “Was the traffic heavy from Boston?” I was asked at reception. I explained that I had driven up from Connecticut.

“Really? So far! Seems people are coming from everywhere these days to spend Thanksgiving on Cape Cod.”

The Dan’l Webster Inn should know. It does more to make the custom possible than any other establishment from Provincetown to Boston. “We have 1,600 reservations for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow,” innkeeper Steve Catania told me with pride, “and 800 requests that we had to refuse.” The inn serves a turkey dinner (cranberry, sage, and pork stuffing; pumpkin and apple soup; Indian pudding) from 11:30 a.m. until 7 p.m. After many years’ practice, it is a smooth operation from valet parking through check paying. No one waits much more than 10 minutes to be seated--or to start eating.

There are other inns on the Cape that also serve the feast, albeit to somewhat smaller numbers. At Falmouth, I learned, the Coonamesset Inn serves 900 Thanksgiving dinners; at East Bay Lodge in Osterville, the number is 700; at the Wayside Inn in Chatham, 600; at the Red Inn in Provincetown, 350. In every town, in every restaurant, hotel or inn, the numbers have been growing each year for more than a decade.

I knew why I had always wanted to be on the Cape for Thanksgiving (and why I was here now), but I thought it was my original idea, not one that would eventually be shared by thousands. Cape Cod was a summer place, after all. It used to close up shop after Labor Day. I guess I imagined going back when only the winter people would be baking their turkeys at home.

But the Mayflower landed first at Provincetown, and there is a 255-foot-high monument to establish that claim. That makes the Cape as authentic a place for travelers to spend an “Early American” Thanksgiving as Plymouth or Williamsburg.

I telephoned some old Cape friends from the inn. I didn’t explain my private reasons for drifting around alone on a family holiday. All had the same explanation for the Cape’s new Thanksgiving customs: Labor Day once marked the end of the season for most summer residents; then Columbus Day weekend became the time for closing up cottages and leaving the Narrow Land to the storms of winter. But the seasons are changing and winter comes later, say all; the weather often stays fine until November, and those who leave do not easily pass up an excuse to return, whether for a Thanksgiving turkey or merely a walk on the beach.

Oh, by the way, one intuitive old friend said, where are you having dinner yourself tomorrow? And so I found myself invited. Cape Cod hospitality may welcome any traveler that way, but such gestures are more likely in November than in August, when too many tourists choke off the natural cordiality of its people. Now that I had been made a part of a “November family,” I thought this might also be a weekend to wander back roads, to retrace old summer footsteps, to find the peace I sought.

When we had finished giving our thanks for being there and then destroying a great, crusty-brown bird (with cranberry sauce made from the fruit of a nearby bog), I still had time to explore. There was some thin ice on the millpond in Sandwich that afternoon, but plenty of open water, too. Gulls and white ducks and mallards were thrashing and diving and circling each other combatively. Across the way, a man was raking rusty leaves from a lawn that was still green; a few silvery, dry shreds clung to willows; the lindens were bare; yellow-berry holly bushes bristled with winter vigor. The sun was a low fireball in the west, making the multipane eyes of old Colonial houses blaze defiantly back at the end of another day--the end of another Thanksgiving.

“Evenin,’ ” said a man walking by me at the millrace. “Nice that it hasn’t turned cold yet.” I agreed. People in Sandwich speak to each other, and not only on holidays--reason enough, I supposed, that we were both looking at the same sunset.

I drove along Massachusetts 6A, the old road that skirts the bay side of the peninsula. At Yarmouth Port, I stopped to see Ben Mews, who publishes his own editions of out-of-print books about the Cape and runs the Parnassus bookstore across the street from the Old Yarmouth Inn. Politely, he remembered an earlier book of mine about off-season on the Cape. “It’s time to do another,” he said. “Off-season is busier than ever.” I said yes; I might find time.

From the inn’s sunny room, the view is of the village green, where an old ship’s anchor lies tilted. The nearby Christmas Tree Shop was so busy on this day after Thanksgiving that a local police officer had been put on duty to direct traffic. Hurrying into the inn for lunch were families not yet wearing topcoats but with hands pushed into pockets and hair blowing about. The young waitresses knew to speak slowly and loudly to certain of the older guests who came in for a cup of chowder.

I went on to Eastham, one of the lower Cape towns that had been an “our place” years ago. It is famous for its red cedars, which grow in random groups on grassy meadows. At dusk, their dark, slope-shouldered shapes look like a crowd of children and adults straggling back from a softball game.

Here and there, wood smoke rose from cottage chimneys; it announced that a few summer people had come back for Thanksgiving again this year. Their names were lettered on signboards next to sandy driveways.

I found the place where on summer evenings we had often gone to look at the Great Nauset marsh, the high bluff that is overgrown with bayberry and cedar, where one of the giant boulders left behind by the glacier had been used by Indians for sharpening fishhooks. My fingers found the ancient grooves while my eyes scanned the winter-brown marsh. An aluminum boat being launched just below echoed in the stillness like a metal drum. A lone boatman approached one of the slate-gray waterways, the slow rising and falling of the boat’s oars looking like gull wings in flight.

On a nearby point, a man and a woman, each wearing yellow oilskins and black boots, stood side by side, surveying Nauset Bay. (I imagined that they had been happily married for many years and would soon come in from the beach to share vodka martinis by a fire. Perhaps not, but loneliness does write convincing scenarios.)

I went on to Provincetown to the Red Inn, which perches on the edge of Provincetown Harbor. The inn is a cozy, attractive place with fireplaces and antiques and a fine view. During dinner there, I read one of Ben Mews’ books by candlelight. It told of Gosnold and Verrazano and Eric the Red and all the explorers who reputedly had come bumping along this queer peninsula long before the Pilgrims showed up in their buckle shoes and funny hats.

The tide turned while I was having coffee. Small boats, tilted on the mud flats, began to right themselves, stirring to the pull of gravity. The beach, which had looked snowy in the glare of a floodlight, now turned burnished black under an advancing sheet of still, cold seawater.

I would take one last walk through Provincetown and then go home. At 10 p.m., all was quiet. Turner’s Candies, where my kids had bought “face pops” for years, was closed for the winter. So was Lewis’ New York Store. The sign saying “Dune Rides Start Here” was still in place, but no dune buggies were parked. Some men in peacoats and knitted caps gathered to play chess and backgammon in the Governor Bradford restaurant. A sign in the door at the Portuguese bakery said: “Sorry, See You in the Spring!”

I went to the base of the Pilgrim Monument, where there is a large bas-relief in bronze depicting the signing of the Mayflower Compact. I had never really paid attention to it before, Now, by the light of a street lamp behind the police station, I looked up at the figures as if for the first time. I thought, anyone who sees me here at this time of night will surely think that I’m up to no good. Finally, I just reached up and put my hand on one of the Pilgrims’ bronze shoes. I wanted to touch something.

On my way back through Truro, the milky beam of Cape Cod Light swept the black glass of sky in front of me like a ghostly windshield wiper, silent and tireless. At the United Methodist Church of Eastham, a temporary Thanksgiving Dinner sign was still standing by the road as I passed: “Alone? Lonely? Unable to Cook? Join us at 2 p.m. Thursday and Share Dinner With Us at No Charge.”

What had I been worrying about? There was plenty of Thanksgiving turkey--and love--on Cape Cod.