Do-Nothing Day

September 20, 2012
Rockport, Massachusetts

 

Though we walked all day,
it seemed the days were not long enough to get tired in.

   HDT Journal, September 30, 1858,
(still thinking about his trip to Rockport earlier that same month)

 

Henry Thoreau first visited Cape Ann in 1848, to deliver a lecture in Gloucester. He returned ten years later for another visit, this time just to take a long walk.

[A Gloucester writer, Peter Anastas, has thoroughly researched these visits -- here is a link to his excellent blog entry on the subject.]

My own visit to the Cape is purely for recreational purposes.
It was nice to get away from a routine of constant deadlines and sedentary, detail-oriented work.  It was a time to just breathe the fresh sea air, ramble, and let the mind spin free.

 

After three days of driving here and there,
it was time for Do-Nothing Day.
This originated years ago, during a summer-long camping trip across the country with Rick, myself and our friend Lou. Three of us in one car. We soon realized that have a Do-Nothing Day was a life-saver. It was a time to just go off by yourself and do whatever struck your fancy.

So Rick would go his own way today – he ended up paddling a beautiful stretch of the Ipswich River, telling us later that it was one of his favorite river excursions ever. [Thanks for that tip too, TrashPaddler!]

Mom & I decided to just hang out in Rockport. I got up early and began the day by walking around with the camera.

This house was old even when Thoreau was here.

 

There’s a reason that Rockport has been host to a very active Artist’s Colony … everywhere you turn, everything looks like a work of art.

 

 Is it a trick of the light?

 

I’m not the only photographer snapping what seem to be random shots in people’s dooryards.

In Cod We Trust

The Kids Are in Grad School

The beach, as usual, is pretty as a picture, even at low tide.

 

 

This year we had some unusual visitors to the beach – a large flock of mallards, and some swans !

 

Seven Swans A-Swimming

 

Motif No. 1 in evening light
 

 

Out on Bearskin Neck, the ultratouristy section of town, are little alleys full of what-not shops, offering for sale:

 the Silly

 

And the Sublime

 

Everywhere are offerings and blessings

Mary’s-Gold

The gods and goddesses look on, and smile

 

Mom is content to really do nothing, and spent lots of time today on the balcony – and who can blame her?

 

How They Walked the Water

September 19, 2012
Essex Shipbuilding Museum
Essex, Massachusetts

Erelong other barks, and brigs, and schooners,
which had in the mean while doubled the Cape,
sailed by her in the smacking breeze,
and our consciences were relieved.
Some of these vessels lagged behind,
while others steadily went ahead.
We narrowly watched their rig and the cut of their jibs,
and how they walked the water,
for there was all the difference between them
that there is between living creatures.
HDT, Cape Cod


There’s a wonderful place to go to learn about wooden ships, and that is the Essex Shipbuilding Museum. This museum is not just rooms full of ship models and artifacts (I love the teeny people in these displays)

but a boatyard full of old boats in various stages of restoration,
and newer boats, currently being built in the age-old method and designs.

How old is age-old, you may ask?
Well … in Essex, people have been crafting boats and launching them into this tidal section of the Essex River since the 1600s.

The museum sits on land that was originally part of the Story Boatyards.

Our guide at the museum was Justin Demitri, who spent hours talking with us. He answered our many, many questions with patience and humor, and his enthusiasm was contagious.

His special area of research is The Dory.

At the other end of the spectrum is this enormous preserved carcass of the Essex-built Evelina Goulart, in her day a swordfishing schooner that travelled the North Atlantic. She now serves as a teaching tool, showing the anatomy of her original construction (including the 6000 or so wooden pegs, or trunnels, holding her 85-foot frame together. )

In the Workshop, you could see fond remembrances of past "design experiments"

 

As well as work that was currently in progress.

If you visit their website, you can see some of the activities of this museum.
There are hands-on workshops for everyone, from elementary schoolkids to ElderHostel groups. The staff and volunteers at the museum are helping to keep the art and crafts of wooden boatbuilding alive.

Things I had been merely reading about in books were here in real life.
It’s like beginning to learn a new language -- this maritime vocabulary, full of words like rig and jibs and lofting.

Justin merely touched upon the concepts of boat-design, but even in our short time here, one began to appreciate “the differences between them,” as Thoreau so astutely observed.

I sure felt a lot less apprehensive about going out on one of these creatures, knowing how sturdily they are built.


My interest in all this began from the historical angle.
Imagine what Henry Thoreau saw on that breezy day, when looking out from Cape Cod --  A horizon full of sails !
Back then, sailing ships were not merely pleasure-craft.
There were fleets of ships, powered only by the wind, carrying wood, granite, and coal – the tractor-trailers of their day.

These were working boats of all sizes and shapes, for everything from hauling cargo worldwide, to coastal mackerel-fishing, or for transporting passengers on a short hop across the bay.

Of course, things today are vastly different than they were in the heyday of Sail.

Different, but the old ways are not dead.
Essex today is experiencing a renewal of sorts, and it all revolves around these beautiful wooden boats. For in truth, they are creations of an entire community.

Just across the way are the Burnham Boatyards.
For eleven generations, a member of that family has created wooden watercraft here.
(In a few days, we would meet the latest in that line, but that’s another story.)

Rick and I could have spent more time in Essex.
Mom, true to her farmgirl roots, was more impressed with the size of the Rhododendrons at the Audubon nature sanctuary in Ipswich.

And along the way, we had seen this boat for sale - it seems to be some sort of weird hybrid. Notice the name that keeps popping up this week !

Gloucester Days

September 18, 2012
Gloucester, Massachusetts

Most persons visit the sea-side in warm weather,
when fogs are frequent,
and the atmosphere is wont to be thick,
and the charm of the sea is to some extent lost.
But I suspect that the fall is the best season,
for then the atmosphere is more transparent,
and it is a greater pleasure to look out over the sea.

   HDT, Cape Cod



As long as I can remember, my family has visited the ocean
at the very end of summer.
When I was little, that meant a visit to South Jersey.
My grandparents lived in an apartment in the north end of Atlantic City,
right across the street from the beach.
I remember sitting on the balcony with Pop-Pop Pierce, who would watch the fishing and tour boats with an honest-to-goodness brass spyglass, and call them out to me by name. “Here comes the Capt. Starns !”

It was a week I looked forward to all year, imprinted upon me early in life. Ever since, I get restless around Labor Day.
It’s a sort of reverse-spawning kicking in.
This fish wants to get back to the Sea!

But don’t be fooled, I am pretty much of a landlubber. Can’t tie knots worth a darn. Not that great a swimmer. But I do love the beach, and admit to a fascination with those who go beyond and out onto the open sea.


In August, I read Ahab’s Wife. Enjoyed it immensely, though I had read only snippets of Moby-Dick, many years ago.
By September, I moved on to Heart of the Sea, a truly absorbing nonfiction account of the Essex whale-ship disaster (the original inspiration for Melville’s novel.)
Now I am finally getting around to seriously reading Moby-Dick.
(Although I never realized before how funny it is -- well, at least, in the beginning.)

So while I am drenching my head in salt-spray with my reading,
my feet remain on land.

Rick is interested in such things as well. His last name is Enos, and the first Enos in his family to arrive in America was a fisherman named Joseph.
Joseph came from Sao Miguel, in the Azores, arriving first in Provincetown, and then settling south of Boston.

We plan on going to the Essex Shipbuilding Museum, which doesn’t open till midweek. And Rick readily agrees to go on some sort of boat-ride – something I’ve always wanted to do while here. (Mom won’t even take a ferry ride.)

Meanwhile, we drive here and there, as a way of letting Rick get to know his way around Cape Ann.
Today, we ride to Gloucester.
First we drive out to Eastern Point.

Rick and I walk along the entire length of the Dogbar Breakwater,
on a not-so nice windy morning. The sea is whipping up off to our left,
and rocks are wet. Halfway out,  I suggest turning back.
Rick points to several very-determined guys who are fishing out at the very end, and keeps walking.

 

While in Gloucester, we sign up for a ride on not one but TWO different schooners. The first one, the Thomas E. Lannon, might be adding a Friday evening sunset sail. We were the first to sign up, but it’s not a sure thing.
The second one we signed up for will be Saturday morning … on the Ardelle !


I didn’t know that they were doing public sails.
It’s been a whole year since I first saw her, and had wondered what it would be like to be on board … I am jumping for joy.

 

She’s docked near Maritime Gloucester. At the excellent museum there,
we began learning about how Gloucester has depended upon the Sea for her living.

 

The name on this box naturally caught my eye … hmm.

 

We had a picnic lunch in Stage Fort Park, finding a table that was well out of the wind, which was gusting hard by mid-day.

On the way back, we stopped at the Cenotaph along the Boulevard.
This is a memorial to those souls from Gloucester who were lost at sea.

 

 

That name again ! All in all, we saw about five other Enoses listed here,
the first in 1860.
It’s not just about some hazy distant past, either; names are added every year.

Clouds are gathering to the west.
There's a high-wind warning tonight.

First Morning

September 18, 2012
Rockport, Massachusetts

 

The sun rose visibly at such a distance over the sea,
that the cloud-bank in the horizon,
which at first concealed him,
was not perceptible until he had risen high behind it,
and plainly broke and dispersed it, like an arrow.
But as yet I looked at him as rising over land,
and could not, without an effort,
realize that he was rising over the sea.
   HDT, Cape Cod

 

 

6:17 a.m.
The view from our balcony, and moments later, from Front Beach.
There's no sleeping-late, on a morning like this !

 

 

To The “Other Cape”

September 17, 2012
Cape Ann, Massachusetts

 

Cape Cod is the bared and bended arm of Massachusetts:
the sandy fist at Provincetown,
— behind which the State stands on her guard,
with her back to the Green Mountains,
and her feet planted on the floor of the ocean,
like an athlete protecting her Bay,
— boxing with northeast storms …
— ready to thrust forward her other fist,
which keeps guard the while upon her breast at Cape Ann.

HDT, Cape Cod

John Smith's map of 1614

 

It’s that time once again, for my annual vacation by the Sea!

This year we are spending five glorious days in Rockport, Massachusetts, to stay in lodging which sits directly on the beach. It's at the easternmost tip of Cape Ann, known as "The Other Cape."

In one hot July day in his Journal, Thoreau wrote disparagingly of his neighbors who felt the need to “go to the beach.”
Here he is at his crabbiest, as he sweats it out back in Concord :

I hear that Mr. and Mrs. Such-a-one
are "going to the beach" for six weeks.
What a failure and defeat this suggests their lives to be !
Here they live, perchance, the rest of the year,
trying to do as they would be done
by and to exercise charity of all kinds, and now at last …
succumb and slope to the beach for six weeks. …
At length their season of activity is arrived,
and they go to the beach, they energetically keep cool.
They bathe daily and are blown on by the sea-breeze.
This keeps their courage up for the labors of the year.

   HDT Journal, July 11, 1859

Full of sour grapes, I would say !

Well, one might consider that when he wrote the above, it was just a few months since his father had died. Henry was busy running the family business, surrounded by the grey of graphite dust in the summer heat.
No six-week vacations for him.
And since I work full-time surrounded by the grey of an office cubicle, going to the beach -- if only for a few days -- sounds wonderful.
It’s been plenty hot, and dry too, in our neck of the woods this summer.

So it was with pleasant anticipation that we stopped in the Green Mountains of Vermont, and met with Rick, who would accompany us on this trip. While Mom and I would be staying in a cozy hotel room, he preferred to set up his tent at the Cape Ann Camp Site (Thanks to blogging friend TrashPaddler for the recommendation!)

 

We arrived by noontime, after taking a route through New Hampshire that avoids major highways as much as possible.
It is still summery green over there, except for a few swamp maples.
Mom and I unpacked a lunch, while Rick efficiently set up his little base-camp. This late in the season, the campers were outnumbered by the local inhabitants.

 

 

The campground is within a mile of Wingaersheek Beach, a place I had never been to.
At this time of year, there was no one at the beach gate to take an admission fee. The tide was high, the sun was out – how could we resist?

O the beach !

 

 

This beach is somewhat different from Crane Beach, which continues on to the northwestward on the other side of Essex Bay. Crane Beach is four miles of beautiful, flat white-sand beach stretching on and on.

Wingaersheek, on the other hand, is full of tidepools and sandbars and rocks to clamber on.

 

To the east, there’s the Annisquam river channel.

Mom, happy in a sandchair, is watching kids and dogs play in the gentle surf.

Shoes are hastily ditched and jeans rolled up.
Rick and I wander about, a-marvelling at the scenery.

 

 

What a beautiful day to “get blown on by the sea-breeze!”

And on this breeze, away off on the horizon, appears a white triangular speck.

 

 

Binoculars reveal:

 

The Ardelle! The mystery schooner that I saw come gliding out of a fog bank in Gloucester Harbor last year --  like a phantom then, but very real today.

She comes toward us, passing Annisquam Light

 

And thence into the river channel, where she heads through the Cut, taking the river route to her port home in Gloucester, on the other side of the Other Cape.

 

 

Not until a week later, back at home, did I read my friend TrashPaddler’s blog (here’s a link), only to learn that he had been at Cape Ann on that very same day, paddling in the river and past Wingaersheek Beach, and spending one evening at the campground!
“Like ships passing in the night” I thought, in an appropriately nautical cliché … only it was a schooner that passed, and we each saw it from different sides of the channel.

 

 

How Sweet

August 11, 2012
Hudson River, South Glens Falls, NY

How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact !
Suggesting what worlds remain to be unveiled.

HDT Journal, April 19, 1952

[These photos are from over a month ago... after this we will be zooming forward into the present time ! Sorry to say, that will mean skipping over some great times with my walking and paddling friends, but it's the only way I am ever going to get caught up !
Now, back to that warm day in August...:]

 

While paddling past the lily-pads, which are now quite torn and tattered,
I observed something new.

The pads are sprinkled with lots of gritty specks at this time of year  --  some sort of bug perhaps.
I never really looked too closely before.  

The new thing was, today I saw honeybees landing on the pads – the flowers themselves being few and far between now.

 

I stopped (as best one can on a moving river) and watched one bee to see what she was up to.

She scuttled around the surface of the pad, amongst the bugs.
Was she eating them?
Their numbers didn’t seem to be diminished when the bee lifted off and visited another pad nearby.

 

What was going on?
I noticed other honeybees landing on other pads.
Were they drinking water?

It wasn’t till I got home and looked at the photos I had taken of this curious behavior.

After enlarging some earlier photos onscreen, the bugs resembled aphids. Hmm.

 

Ants will sometimes “milk” aphids, stimulating them to produce a sweet drop of liquid called honeydew.

After some internet searching, I came up with this link.

It’s been a very dry summer. Perhaps there are less flowers producing less nectar at this time of year.

So the honeybees go abroad, looking for sweetness wherever they can.