Cape Cod Days: Arrival

Cape Cod Days: a Travel Piece

Like my stories of Chattanooga, Everglades National Park, and The Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, my Stories of Cape Cod are stories of place. They are stories of land shaped by natural forces and people shaped by the ocean and dunes. They are also stories of mine from before I arrived in Chattanooga, TN, in 1990. Entries are chronological from this point forward. Underlined portions are active links to websites with additional information.

I arrived at Cape Cod in the fall of 1986 by crossing a bridge over the Cape Cod Canal. The official story says that this canal, operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, shaves 135 miles off a ship’s journey up or down the coast. It connects Cape Cod Bay in the north to Buzzard’s Bay in the south and is occasionally used by whales, causing temporary closures to ship traffic. Receding tides can reach 5.2 miles per hour.

I drove up the cape on Route 6, its main highway, toward Truro, which would be my home for most of the year. Geologists say the road lies on top of a terminal moraine formed by glacial action. Along with New York’s Long Island and Rhode Island’s Block Island, it is known as the outer lands.

Without much thought, I traveled past Falmouth, home to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and the Marine Biological Laboratory. The town of Woods Hole shocked the anti-conservationist movement by erecting a statue of Rachel Carson a few years ago. This move seemed appropriate since Carson researched marine biology there during the summer before she began a Master of Science degree in zoology at Johns Hopkins. She later served on the Marine Biology Laboratory’s board of directors.

I also passed Mashpee, home of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe. I later considered visiting these places but realized that doing so without some reason other than satisfying my curiosity might be intrusive.

Route 6 continued eastward to Orleans, where it turned north. Making that turn, I was on the outer cape. On the map, Cape Cod looks like an arm bent at the elbow. The area north of the elbow is the outer cape. At Provincetown, it turns again at the wrist, and the hand runs westward, back toward the mainland.

The east side of the outer cape has salt marshes, bays, and harbors. The bottom of Cape Cod Bay slopes gently outward, so the water is comparatively shallow. Stellwagen Bank lies North of Cape Cod, east of Boston, and south of Cape Ann. It was a rich fishing ground and is now famous for whale watching.

The west side of the outer cape is all sandy beaches, modified by wind and waves, sometimes daily. Longshore currents moved sand south to form Monomoy Island and north to make Race Point in Provincetown. The bottom drops from the shore, creating a steep approach to the deep Atlantic water. I would later stand on Ballston Beach and see migrating whales passing in those deep waters.

I stopped at Orleans to buy a surfcasting rig, convinced I would spend a lot of time fishing. The natural world held other attractions for me that quickly caught my attention. Migrating birds, whales, turtles, and other creatures are like a river flowing down the Atlantic Coast, and Cape Cod is like a dam interrupting their passage.

Driving north on Route 6, I passed the Salt Pond Visitor Center of Cape Cod National Seashore in Eastham. It would prove a productive birdwatching resource for me in the coming months. The outer cape would become familiar territory. Trips below Eastham and neighboring Wellfleet would be rare.