First Impressions

My Cape Cod Adventure Continues

I have not enabled payments because I am still researching the platform to determine what the paid version of my Substack will look like. The free version will not go away, and there will always be free content on Ray’s Substack. Moving forward, I plan to post twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday.

September 1986: First Impressions

At Truro, I turned west on Pamet Road. The name came from the Payomet Wampanoag Tribe. I would find a three-story structure at the end of the road, formerly a Coast Guard Shore Station, my home and workplace until early June.

I would share the space with three other naturalists and live in a large room on the lower floor. There was a boy’s dormitory in another large room for resident groups. The middle floor held a dining area, a meeting room, and the director’s apartment. Two naturalists lived on the top floor.

Another top floor room was reserved for the visiting teacher, while others were girls’ dormitories. Visiting school groups, accompanied by their teacher, would arrive on Monday and spend five days learning about Cape Cod’s history and the natural world.

The front windows of the second story looked out over a dune to the Atlantic Ocean. Ballston Beach was out of view, tucked between the ocean and the dune. On my first day, I walked to the beach, which seemed lonely and desolate. A few gulls occasionally made forays as the waves gently lapped the shore.

I later learned that the beach is always in motion. With wind and storms, the gentle waves become a crashing surf. The longshore current moves sand and sculpts new landforms. Terra Firma, solid ground, is an illusion in such places.

Monomoy Island to the south provides an example of such motion. Historically, a storm cut the island into North Monomoy and South Monomoy. One island became two, and they were once a peninsula.

Monomoy was home to a fishing village that included a school. The tip of South Monomoy holds Monomoy Point Light, a disused lighthouse that is the only remaining structure within the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge.

Lighthouses and rescue stations are historical features of the outer cape. The building where I lived had been quarters for Coast Guard personnel who rescued passengers and crew from sinking ships. It was preceded by a wooden structure erected by the US Lifesaving Service.

Surfmen of the Lifesaving Service walked the beach and kept a sharp lookout for shipwrecks. When they spotted a wreck, they would signal the station with a flare, and a crew brought the surfboat to the beach and launched it into the waves. Rescues often involved multiple trips with the surfboat. Passengers sometimes tried to carry luggage, but the surfmen threw it overboard to accommodate more passengers.

Although I heard the story of these events from multiple sources while I lived there, the National Park Service film. Wooden Ships and Men of Iron is an excellent resource. That film also includes a section on whaling and its hazards and tells how the US Lifesaving Service merged with the Revenue Cutter Service to become the modern Coast Guard. It also mentions the construction of the Cape Cod Canal, which significantly reduced the number of shipwrecks as ships abandoned the more hazardous route along the outer cape.

Each time I visited the beach with its waves and foam, I noticed trash tossed ashore by the sea. Occasional buoys, wooden fish traps, and other refuse would show up. Though this was probably lost or thrown overboard, writing about it reminds me of an early chapter of Thoreau’s Cape Cod in which he described a shipwreck he encountered at the beginning of his journey. Thoreau described the bodies of Irish immigrants lined up to be claimed by their relatives. He also wrote of the locals arriving to salvage anything they could from the ship.

Walking Landward

American Beach Grass grew on the back of the dunes, stabilizing them and preventing them from being blown away. The beach grass was interrupted occasionally by bayberry. This shrub’s berries provide the wax to scent bayberry candles. The seldom-noticed dusty miller plant was also prevalent. This low vegetation gave way to pitch pine further from the shore.

These three bands: sand, beachgrass, and pitch pine, were interrupted only by a freshwater marsh known as the “Pamet River,” with its cattails and bordering sumac. This little marsh provided the only fall color to relieve my eyes later in the season.

On my first day there, I saw a park service ranger leading a walk. She pointed out a pokeberry, which seemed incongruous, though she assured me that many southern plants grow on Cape Cod due to the ocean’s moderating climate.

I later discovered that the east side of the outer cape had some sand, but mostly salt marshes and harbors bordered Cape Cod Bay. I later visited more freshwater environments, such as glacial potholes, a red maple swamp, and an Atlantic white cedar swamp.

That weekend I saw a human migration. The presence of sunbathers, swimmers, and anglers assured me that tourism was still ongoing. On a trip to Provincetown for groceries, parking was $6.00 per day, although I heard there would be no charge for parking during the offseason.