When I signed up for the floating sound bath, I had no idea it was literal. I imagined lying on a grassy lawn overlooking Cape Cod Bay and ascending in a metaphorical sense. Ocean Edge Resort had a different idea.
Located in Brewster, just shy of the elbow’s interior on Cape Cod, Ocean Edge is an iconic resort that has long represented summertime on the Cape for generations of vacationers. The property rambles over 429 acres with six food and beverage offerings on-site and the largest ballroom on Cape Cod. A member of Historic Hotels of America, the hotel is comprised of The Villages and The Mansion, a sprawling Victorian estate that was the home of the Nickerson family. It later became a seminary for the La Salette order before ultimately becoming an event space and then hotel in the 1980s. I got a firsthand look inside the property’s history on a tour with owner Suzanne Corcoran. She has stories about the mansion’s every nook and cranny—antique books in the study, intricate details in stained glass—perhaps from the time she spent living there as a teenager after her family bought the property in 1980.
Ocean Edge celebrates its rich history while tapping into all the Cape has to offer today. The property partners with Brewster Oysters, which cultivates oysters off the beach behind the property, for in-villa tastings, serving up Brewster’s varietal with sparkling rosé mignonette or blood orange and raspberry granita. It boasts other Cape Cod favorites, too: tennis lessons, pickleball, clam chowder, access to the Cape Cod Rail Trail, a 25-mile bike path that links South Yarmouth to Wellfleet.
The latest way Ocean Edge delivers on their promise of old and new is through their retreat program. The property has organized numerous retreats in the months ahead around yoga, sound healing, tennis, cold immersion, and embracing life transitions.
“I think retreats are so transformative because we're pulling people out of their normal life,” said Liza Bertini, who came to Ocean Edge from retreat heavyweight Kripalu, where she was director of programming.
“The thing about Ocean Edge that’s really different is that sometimes you go to a retreat center and it seems really heavy,” she added. “Here, there’s a lightness to it. We can do deep work. We can be in community, and we can also be in a beautiful setting. There’s a lightheartedness that contributes to the vibe.”
Incredibly warm and friendly hospitality begets this ease and nonchalance throughout the property, the sense that you belong in the Nickerson Mansion. Perhaps the best embodiment of Ocean Edge’s old-meets-new verve is the floating sound bath. Looking at their indoor pool from 1986, they saw an opportunity to transform the space into a mystical evening meditation with the guidance of a teacher and a crying bowl. An inventive and unforgettable use of space, it’s the ideal way to conclude a stay in Brewster with one, easeful sigh, almost evoking Eloise in its whimsical engagement with this grand estate. I grabbed my air mattress, pushed off the edge and let myself drift away, not without occasionally peeking one eye open and watching as Suzanne took a kayak paddle and gently propelled meditators back into the water, to continue on their journeys within.
© Bryce Vickmark