This past summer we were staying on Cape Cod with friends who introduced us to the local kettle ponds – fresh water ponds in the woods formed long ago by glacial action. We had heard of these ponds before but weren’t sure where they were located. They cannot be seen from the road, so you have to walk down paths through the woods to get to them.

We first went to the Great Pond in Wellfleet one evening (after hours when you no longer need a Wellfleet town beach sticker to park), where the water was very high so there was very little beach. The water came right up to the tree line and in some places even into the trees. The water was also crystal clear and wonderfully warm. We went back there over several evenings – on one night I drew and the others I swam. One evening as I was swimming with my husband I thought I saw a big birch stick in the water behind him, but then I realized it was the head of a rather large snapping turtle. We had been swimming for an hour, so we thought we would pack it in, go home and leave the pond to the turtle.