TRIP #5, 2014--Trailing Behind

Trailing Behind
But I really didn't!  I actually kept up all day along a whole series of trails.  And we probably walked at least six or seven miles of trails during the day.
"We're going to take advantage of the weather today," said Andy, when we pulled into the Fort Hill parking area on Cape Cod around noon.  "The motel won't be ready yet, and it's too nice to stay inside," he added.
Weathermen predicted thunderstorms for tomorrow, so once we reached the arm of the Cape, we stopped for hikes.  Andy was right.  Although there was a stiff breeze along the water, the bright sun warmed the air temperature into the mid-60's.  Out of the wind, we were comfortable in shirt sleeves... pretty impressive for October 7th!

Near the beach and what then was a navigable harbor,
Nauset Indians call this area home in the early 1600's. 

We chose the Red Maple Swamp Trail at Fort Hill, a looping path through woods and along the boardwalk of Nauset Marsh.  "Beware of tick infestation" warned the signs.  They probably should have issued more warnings about the poison ivy.  But I guess wariness in that case is based on knowledge and our ability to identify the brilliantly colored leaf triplets everywhere."Do you think this is second growth?" I asked Andy.
He wasn't sure.  Then I read the pamphlet.  In 1672, the Town of Eastham, an offshoot of the Plymouth Colony, invited Samuel Treat to be their first minister in residence.  In return for his services, he was paid 50 pounds a year, "sufficient wood" at his door and the "oyle" or part of every whale cast ashore.  His legendary Calvinist service lasted 45 years.
It was good soil that drew the first colonists to Nauset in 1644.  Gradually, Fort Hill was converted to agricultural use--corn, rye, pasture, hay fields, orchards, vegetable gardens.  There were cattle, cows and goats.  Salt hay was harvested from the marsh with floating barges, and an Irish-born minister taught residents how to dry and burn peat for fuel.  Even the salt of the sea was gathered, and by 1830, not a forest remained and only at Fort Hill was there any semblance of soil.
Now I could answer Andy's doubts about second growth.  "There wasn't a tree here in 1850," I told him.

The entrance to Edward Penniman's
home is marked by a whale jaw bone.

When Edward Penniman grew up in Eastham on Cape Cod, there were few ways to make a living.  At age 11, in 1842, he left his homestead on Fort Hill and went to sea.  By 21 he had been a harpooner on the Isabella, a square-rigger out of New Bedford, and at age 29, he captained his own whaler bark.  He sailed the Arctic Ocean, paid call at such far flung ports as Fiji, Honolulu, Patagonia and Panama, and circled the world several times.  He returned to Fort Hill in Eastham to build a house in 1868.  It became a local landmark with a kerosene chandelier, a lead-lined rainwater cistern in the attic, indoor plumbing and a cupola overlooking both bay and sea.
We followed the Nauset Marsh Trail out to the Coast Guard Beach Trail.  Charted by the French explorer Samuel de Champlain in 1605, Nauset Marsh was then a navigable bay.  The explorer also noted a number of beehive-shaped homes and fields on the hillsides, placed there by native Nausets. We saw the gigantic sharpening rock that early Indians used to sharpen their tools and weapons.  The trail and bicycle path back led through stands of red cedars, sun-loving trees that are quick to take over open fields.

The boardwalk leads to the Coast Guard Beach Trail on the
other side of Salt Marsh.

One trail called Buttonbush provided handicapped accessibility and another offered rope leads with braille signs for the blind.  We followed those and continued on the extension through a stand of black locust.  These trees fix nitrogen into the soil and were introduced to replenish land depleted by over-farming.  On the way back we met a flock of about ten turkeys and a little later, a praying mantis on the bike track.

Surprisingly large, the praying mantis
poses for a photograph.

Along this trail was a marker for the Doane family homestead and a plaque that commemorated the 350th anniversary of the founding of the town of Eastham at Nauset in 1644. In that year seven families left the Plymouth Colony to start their own town in 1651: Bangs, Cook, Doane, Higgins, Prence, Smalley and Snow.
Another spot marked the first landing of the Mayflower on November 9, 1620.  Preferring to settle near the mouth of the Hudson River, the captain sailed south but encountered dangerous shoals.  Captain Jones ordered the ship head back north for safety reasons, and they dropped anchor in what is now Provincetown Harbor.  The 101 passengers and crew remained here for a month, gathering firewood and searching for food and fresh water, before setting sail for the mainland to establish Plymouth Colony.

Temporarily safe from the ravages of cliff
erosion, Nauset Light flashes red and white.

Our next walk was out to Nauset Lighthouse along the Nauset Light Trail.  It was a three-mile round-trip excursion on foot through sandy woodlands and grassy fields.  Poison ivy, gorgeous in its brilliant red patches, lined the paths and encircled the trees.  Avoiding even the slightest brush, I stayed to the center of the sometimes narrow trail and clutched my purse and the camera case close. No trailing behind for me! Andy walked immediately ahead of me, centered as well.  He wasn't taking chances either.
Both the Nauset Light and the cliff had to give way to the Atlantic Ocean.  The first lighthouses built at Nauset in 1838 were placed 600 feet east of the current point, but ocean waves ate away at the base of the cliffs causing erosion rates that averaged three feet a year.  The original beacons were replaced with three wooden towers set farther back.  In 1923, a cast iron lighthouse was brought in from Chatham and set well back, but by 1996, the Nauset Light was less than 40 feet from the eroding cliff edge.  The current Nauset Light was moved across the road in 1996, where it stands today.

This middle "Sister" retains its beacon, but
all three are currently undergoing renovation.

To make this point easily recognizable from the sea, the Three Sisters lighthouses of 1838 used three lanterns 150 feet apart.  From 1923 to 1981, the Nauset Light carried on the original tradition by flashing three times every ten seconds.  The present light flashes an alternating red and white pattern. With the camera poised, I tried to catch a flash.
Following the posted signs, we walked a quarter mile on the trail that paralleled the road to find the original Three Sisters. The trio had provided a landmark for sailors making their way along the Outer Cape from 1838 to 1911.  The triple light configuration told sailors they had reached the Cape's mid-point.  Changing lighthouse technology forced the removal of the lights from their posts and cliff erosion caused the removal of the buildings themselves.  They were reunited as a tourist attraction in 1989.  Today only one is topped by a beacon, but all three were undergoing renovation.  "We're installing a complete fire safety system," explained one of the workers when I asked.

Rare cedar trees line the boardwalk
through White Cedar Swamp.

"We're going to do one more hike and one more lighthouse," announced Andy, when we made it back to the car.  His choice was the Atlantic White Cedar Swamp Trail.  "It's only a little over a mile, shorten than its name.  We should make that."
As we started out, we read that all the land around us was barren in the 1850's, the result of years of overuse.  It was only in the last century that the abandoned farm land began to recover.
One condition grades into another.  Life is harsh at the edge of the sea.  Further inland, conditions soften.  The dehydrating effects of salt spray lessen and a down-wind slope provides shelter from the pruning effects of salt spray and wind.  At Cedar Swamp a richer soil holds more water.
When the last glacier retreated, it left a block of ice in the depression that is Cedar Swamp.  As glacial ice melted and the ocean rose 400 feet, the fresh-water table of land was lifted from underneath.  At last, fresh water intersected this "kettle" about 7,000 years ago.  Plants of both land and sea added debris to the depression.  Today the layer of peat is 24 feet thick.  Perhaps 5,000 years ago, Atlantic white cedar, a southern plant, began to grow wherever there was wet ground or swamp.

Little is left of the Marconi Station except some stone footings
on the edge of the ocean.

European colonists quickly cleared the forested swamps.  They had dreamed of such a wood--light, decay resistant and easy to shape--so they used it for everything: board for buildings, joists and frames for doors and rafters, floor boards, whale oil tanks, fence posts, garden poles, laths and boxes, woodenware, organ pipes, water pipes, even gun powder from its charcoal.  Almost no trees survived!  But it is the nature of the Atlantic white cedar to invade swamps, and here at Atlantic White Cedar Swamp Trail along the boardwalk, the species has come back.
"You were right," complimented Andy, as we climbed the sand hill.  "The Marconi Station is gone." We walked out to the site of the first Transatlantic Wireless Telegraph Station and only a sign remained.  It said, "Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America, Transmitted January 19, 1903, addressed to Edward VII, King of England, by Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States of America."
I remembered from our last visit years ago that the ocean threatened to take the station.  Now it had been moved and only footings in the water and pipes sticking out of the sand cliff showed evidence of Marconi's achievement in 1901.  We inched our way to the fence to see what was left.  It was a giant cliff wall of sand, a sand beach and crashing waves.

The oldest windmill on
Cape Cod is on the green
in Eastham.

Gugliemo Marconi had actually transmitted wireless telegraph signals as early as 1890--between tin plates mounted on posts in his father's garden in Italy.  He was only 16 years old.  He gradually increased the distances: one mile in 1895, 20 miles in 19899, across the English Channel.  In December of 1901, he received the first transatlantic signal, the letter "S," tapped out at his English station.
Finally, on January 18, 1903, he transmitted a 48-word message from here to England and promptly received a reply.  It was the first two-way transoceanic communication and the first wireless telegram between America and Europe.
But the ocean was too powerful. It claimed the land on which Marconi's towers were built.

From the memorial, we
watch the light blinking
in the distance.

"Okay," Andy announced, as we climbed back in Little Red. "Now we have one more lighthouse.  You need to navigate to Shore Road in Chatham. "But first we noticed the Eastham Windmill along the way.  This was Cape Cod's oldest windmill, built in Plymouth in 1680, by Thomas Paine of Eastham.  It was moved to Truro in 1770, to Eastham in 1793, and to its current location in 1880.  That certainly deserved a stop and a look around.
Our final destination was the very classy town of Chatham.

Aiming the camera, I catch the Chatham
Lighthouse light as it rotates out to sea.

"There's lots of money here," said Andy.  We followed a tour bus to the point at Chatham Lighthouse, a popular sightseeing spot.  A monument to a William Mack from his family stood outside the Lost Seaman's Cemetery, and beyond it the lighthouse blinked.
But the greatest attraction was the shoreline.

Beyond the first inlet, seals
line the sand beach.

Visitors lined the upper walk and stood along the beach far below us.  Andy grabbed the binoculars. Far out on an extended sand bar lolled a colony of seals.  Most slept on the beach, but a few frolicked in the water.  "They certainly attract attention," I told Andy, who peered through the binoculars at the sea gulls and cormorants nearby.
"Do you know what else they attract?" he asked, refocusing the binoculars on the seals.  "Great whites.  It's warm enough because of the Gulf Stream, and seal is their favorite food!"
I guess that's my lesson for today. Don't trail behind!