English 12

May 16, 1995

Cape Cod is a vacationer's delight. What is it that draws people to this long, bent arm of Massachusetts? Could it be the gift shops, outlets, malls, endless array of restaurants, or beautiful beaches? For me, Cape Cod's draw has always been a mystery. After reading the book Cape Cod by Henry David Thoreau, 1 decided my family and I needed to find the Cape he wrote about. Somehow, after a trip to the library to research the towns described in the book, 1 was drawn to the town of Wellfleet. Our day' s adventure began by loading up the family into the car on a beautiful spring Saturday.

The steady stream of traffic to and from the Cape seemed to defeat my every attempt to ride the stage coach and view the Cape as Thoreau did in the mid 1800' s. It was hard to believe that there was no canal back then, let alone these massive bridges with their metal frames towering far above the canal. I found myself yearning for a simpler time. Perhaps we would stumble upon a more scenic area that would help me see those "beautiful villages" (p. 16) as described by Thoreau with "narrow streets in which we turned round and round till we could not tell which way we were going" (p. 17). Anything at this point would be a welcome sight.

Miles of Traveling along Route 6 through outskirts of various towns finally brought us to our destination. Wellfleet is nestled between the bay and ocean on a narrow strip of land. The ocean side is now called Marconi National Park. It's named after G. Marconi, who built a wireless station along the crest of the high dunes, and on January of 1903 sent the first telegraph message across the Atlantic Ocean to England.

As we disembarked our plush, motor-driven stage coach we headed straight for the beach. The pages in the book took on physical form once on the beach, and it became more apparent to me what Thoreau had described about the ocean. "This sand bank—the backbone of the Cape—rose directly from the beach to the height of a hundred feet or more above the ocean... On our right, beneath us, was the beach of smooth and gently sloping sand.. .next the endless series of white breakers; further still, the light green water over the bar...and beyond, this stretched the unwearied and illimitable ocean" (p. 47). Could it be that over 100 years ago Thoreau had ga/ed upon this ocean and had seen exactly what I was seeing at that moment?! We sat in the warmth of the dry, soft sand and listened to the sound of the "roaring of breakers" (p. 51) and watched the "ceaseless flux and reflux of the waves" (p. 51). The beach was clean of ocean debris, and there were only small, sparkling pebbles along shoreline. We put a few of the more shiny ones in our pocket to inspect more closely when we got home. They lost their beauty and luster once dry, and I wished we had left them where they belonged, amidst the beauty of the ocean. Thoreau had also collected rocks and placed them in his pocket. He wrote, "when they were dry they had lost their beauty, and at each sitting we emptied our pockets again of the least remarkable, until our collection was well culled" (p. 85). We left the beach with a renewed appreciation of this vast ocean, and I left with a new sense of being a part of the past.

After climbing back up the sand dunes we entered a display area at the Marconi station site. Along with information about this telegraph station, there were also some thick, rusted chains entangled around large pieces of bleached, splintered timber from shipwrecks of long ago. Possibly, this could be some of the wreckage Thoreau noted. The observation platform on the dunes offered a 360° view of the Cape. The maps tell us of this small width of land, but to see it in actuality makes one realize how fragile this land is against the unpredictable, tumultuous sea on either side.

Then, we headed a couple hundred feet from the sand dunes. There was a winding path through the "woods" of Scrub Oaks and Pitch Pine. Thoreau wrote about these woods of "dwarfish trees" and "shrubby hills" (p. 101). Posted signs along the trail named the various bushes and other vegetation, such as beach plum and bearberry. They were all names I recognized from the book. More than a century had passed, yet the "woods" were still very much alive.

Beyond this trail in the "woods" was White Cedar Swamp with a winding, elevated boardwalk. Its moss-covered, damp floor and dense, white-cedar ceiling offered an eerie, imaginative game for this family of four. We enjoyed telling stories of trolls lurking behind every tree and rock.

Our next stop was the town center. There were narrow, winding roads lined with weathered , cedar-shingled homes, and high-steepled, white churches. Many art studios lined Main Street and a huge marina sat on the bay. The people going in and out of the shops were basically tourists with cameras around their necks, and a leisurely stride in their walk. Ocean fish and shellfish were still off-loaded and packed for market at the town pier, but there were also party boats docked and ready for the fishing enthusiast. We did not stay in town long, since it didn't hold the fascination that the ocean did. We decided to move on to the bay.

The Great Island Trail began in an area of Pitch Pines. There was a slight hill within the pines which offered a safe, cool haven for a lone grave. The 2' by 5' granite slab on top of the grave read "a Wampanoag Woman..." People who had passed this site had left gifts of shells, feathers and such on her grave. It was a wonderful reminder that the Wampanoag people and other native Americans were the first who lived here. They had respected this land, and we needed to continue in that respect.

The trail continued along the sand dunes which bordered the bay. These dunes formed a wall between the tidal flats and the bay. Thoreau wrote that it seemed to him "that the inside half of the beach sloped toward the water to meet the other, forming a ridge ten or twelve feet high the whole length of the shore" (p. 151). This ridge was still present, and after walking the trail for about an hour we anxiously climbed the dune to see the bay. This side of the Cape was calm and peaceful. We could hear the lapping and the ever-present sound of the sea-gulls overhead. The bay side of the Cape was much quieter than the ocean side, yet the beach offered a lot more than just pebbles in its sand. Thoreau called it a "wild, rank place and there was no flattery in it." He goes on to write that it was "strewn with crabs, horseshoes, and razor-clams, and whatever the sea casts up, a vast morgue...rotting and bleaching in the sun and waves, and each tide turns them in their beds, and tucks fresh sand under them" (p. 147). As we walked through the treasures of the beach, I put a large, white, smooth shell in my pocket. One of my sons found a long, gray feather to bring home as a reminder of our day. We watched and listened to the peaceful bay for a while longer and enjoyed the warmth of the sun against our faces.

We all walked back to the car quietly, each within our own thoughts of the day. My son and I left our beach treasures at the Wampanoag woman's grave as we finished our journey. Neither of us knew why we were doing this, except that it was simply the right thing to do.

Thoreau visited Cape Cod in October of 1849, I visited the Cape in May of 1995. Thoreau's book showed me the way to find this part of Cape Cod—this link with the past.