Up to the Sea Again, to Ride a Kayak, or a Porch
By Sara Rimer

I LOOK up from my cup of coffee. The view from the porch where I’m sitting on the North Shore on a misty July morning stretches across a green lawn and hedges to a freshly mowed hayfield, then beyond to a broad salt marsh threaded with a sinuous tidal creek and finally to dunes, sea and sky.

I’m at the Inn at Castle Hill in Ipswich, on the early-20th-century seaside summer estate created by Richard T. Crane Jr., the Chicago plumbing magnate, and transformed into a 2,100-acre nature preserve that includes pristine Crane Beach.

If the North Shore, with its meadows, marshes and vistas of the North Atlantic is prime real estate for porch sitting, then the Inn at Castle Hill might just have the supreme porch. I could sit here happily all morning admiring the view and listening to the birds.

Oh yes, the birds. Along with its other delights the Crane property, on the Atlantic flyway, is a wildlife refuge and birders’ paradise.

All this open space, serenity and nature ‘ just 30 miles north of Boston and our apartment. I drove up after work, leaving it all behind the moment I headed down Argilla Road toward the inn and caught my first look at that marsh flowing into sea and sky. I fell asleep to the sound of the waves.

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