I'll miss the Sagamore rotary
MY HEART is breaking. Time is running out. The completion of the Sagamore flyover project seems imminent. Our beloved rotary will disappear.
Route 3 will morph into Route 6 without a second thought.
I might be the only Cape Codder who commutes to Boston who is unhappy to see our beleaguered and besmirched landmark deconstructed.
Here's why: The rotary at the Sagamore Bridge is not merely an antiquated traffic plan, although for many newcomers, learning to master the whirling gear takes practice. A smear of motion with no distinction between vehicles, inexperienced drivers enter the rotary, ride their brakes, or freeze -- using too much intellectual forethought and caution. But old hands merge seamlessly, holistically, and roll around the rotary without decelerating. Natives just plow through. Drivers have to fend for themselves and merge with the wheel of fortune as it's already spinning.
But the Sagamore rotary is much more than a traffic problem; it's a timeless icon of Cape Cod's undaunted spirit. Circling the rotary is a strategic test of our human will, one that is not merely symbolic but a necessary organic mechanism for our vaulted reentry to our privileged terrain. To earn that privilege, we must navigate that little counter-clockwise quarter turn, which forces us to take a few extra minutes to be alone with our thoughts.
The wait gives us the time to think of how good it will be to get over that bridge, whether to start our long awaited vacations or to return to our daily lives. Either way, once you are over the canal, the world is enchanted. The canal, itself, is like the River Lethe, ''the river of forgetfulness," in which our problems can be soothed or dispersed. We all know this:
It's different on Cape Cod. It's magic. But not everyone belongs here.
An enchanted place should always have a gatekeeper of some kind. Our rotary is a faithful buffer; although unmanned, it's always been a kind of guardhouse. No one is ever turned away, but it asks us to slow down. Within its tolerant welcome of our painstaking approach, it addresses the question, ''Why are you here?" We have to have a heartfelt plan, beyond normal business, or what a philosopher once said, ''reasons that reason does not know," or we shouldn't cross over.
The rotary gives us a chance to take stock, to make some internal adjustments. The rotary is a bridge -- to the bridge. A transcendental archway. Whether we are crawling in congested lines or hurtling like a pinball zinging from Route 3 to Route 6, to circle the rotary is to think about what Cape Cod means to us. Our leap from the mainland to the white sands and safe harbors of our particular towns and Provincelands -- shall we say, to our promised land -- is more than an annoying commute, it's a psychic phenomenon. Everyone knows the great feeling when we reach the crest of the bridge and sink down the other side, onto the Cape.
It doesn't necessarily separate the men from the boys or the tourists from the year-rounders, but the rotary gives us a first and last chance to recognize and evaluate our Cape Cod lives. An inconvenience to some, to me it means that I'm almost home, almost saved. With the flyover people will be funneled on, thoughtlessly squeezed through, but the rotary forces us to decide for ourselves, to actually look both ways and make the right turn.
Maria Flook is a writer in residence at Emerson College. 