Where low dunes roll their yellow waves inland from the shore on Monomoy; where the shifting blues and greens and purples of the open Atlantic stretch away unbroken to Europe from Monomooy; where slow waves trip and spill and slide in foam up the shining incline of the beach and sanderlings flow, on scurrying feet, up and back with every wave on Monomoy; there, under the late-August sun, amid the sparse marram grass and seaside goldenrod, on Cape Cod's far-eastern tideline of the continent, our long adventure with the fall began.