The path to the water in the Cove is known (to people who have lived here for a while, anyway) as the Hut Road. Back when we first moved in, someone would haul a few boards to the beach each spring and frame up a simple room. Sometimes it stood on stilts, sometimes it sat on the sand. They'd thatch it with palms and fabric, decorate with shells and there it would sit, party central, drying, bleached by the sun, until the first big waves of winter took it away.

It's been a while since the last hut. A few years back some cranky, prissy condo dwellers took issue with the free-spirited tradition and ripped apart and dragged away a particularly lovely little room. (Then they cemented a huge "No Trespassing" sign to a rock formation, and were forced to take it down when a judge ruled it not just ugly and obnoxious, but illegal.)

So it was a nice surprise to find this little hut on the beach last night. It's just a frail and flimsy tent any wind could take down, but it's a hut nonetheless.

Spring, it seems, is nearly here.