Coast Guard Beach, Cape Cod National Seashore, Massachusetts — From the place where the Mayflower made her first landfall in the New World, we stand at the beginning of what Henry David Thoreau called "The Great Beach." Here, along the backside of Cape Cod, the sun's orb rises directly over an endless Atlantic Ocean swell. But not today, a day when the vestige of a fierce Atlantic storm sends a crashing surf onto the beach. Waves, wind and sand dance together, alternately eroding the coastline and building the dunes back up. Shore birds, seals, a lone surfer, and a distant surf-casting fishermen search frigid waters for fish as waves pound the shoreline slope.