Walking the Berkshires

Buzzard's Eye View

(photo credit Jay Heard)

This is Windrock from the air.  The photographer has managed almost exactly to capture the full frontage of the property - roughtly 400 ft' -  on Buzzards Bay.  It runs a mile back into those woods.  The advance of that line of houses in the background is what our pending conservation easement with the Town of Wareham and Wareham Land Trust is meant to prevent. 

We are going back before October's Town Meeting for a reauthorization of the purchase of our easement using Wareham's Community Preservation Act funds.  Stay tuned.

Slow Ewes Day

On the way in to work this morning - a gorgeous bright day, incidentally, without a hint of humidity - I came upon two carcasses.  There is nothing remarkable about roadkill in general, but this pair caught my attention because one animal had been a squirrel and the other was the vulture that had been feeding on it when the great leveler came barreling down the roadway.

As it happens, this scene was accompanied by a companion piece of the radio about efforts to capture a sheep that has been living on a woody median between two interstate highways in Massachusetts.  Even more remarkably, it has been doing so for about a year.  I drive by the Exit 7 on 495 at the interchange with 95 on the way to Wareham, and there is nice habitat there.  It has occurred to me more than once when driving by that there is even room enough to set up a tent and live rough without being obvious to passersby.  The sheep has no such accommodation, but it has resisted becoming roadkill, and capture, for a long time, now.  No word as to where it came from or how it got there, but if it had once been a pet it is very skittish around people. 

Most obvious statement quoted in the media frenzy surrounding this, ahem, ewesitem:

"A sheep doesn't belong in the middle of the highway."

What I can't figure out is why the burgeoning coyote population in SE Mass hasn't had a go at this mutton in the median.  Probably enough pickings for them on the suburban fringe without risking being roadkill themselves.  Then again, they have swum over to the Elizabeth Islands on Vineyard Sound, where the prime attraction is Forbes family sheep.

Blue Blood at Bay

(Photo credit: Eurypterids.net)

Walking the shores of Buzzards Bay this past weekend, I was struck once again by the changes that have taken place here since my childhood.  Drifts of eelgrass line the high tide line once more: a rare sight just a decade or so ago after a massive die-back of our still depleted grass beds.  Even higher mounds of slipper shells are so abundant along this stretch of coastline they tinge the cobble beach a dusty rose.  On the other hand, I found just one fragment of horseshoe crab shell, and cannot remember the last time I saw a live one in the water. 

The four living species of horseshoe crab represent one of nature's most ancient designs.  Limulus polyphemus, found in the North Atlantic shallows from Maine to Mexico, has remained virtually unchanged since it evolved an estimated 400 million years ago.  They survived the great Permian-Triassic extinction event which was especially catastrophic for marine organisms, and two subsequent major mass extinctions (the Triassic-Jurassic 200 million years ago and the Cretaceous–Tertiary event 65 million years ago that brought an end to the dinosaurs).  In all that time, continents rose and fell, ash and ice covered the land, yet these primitive relatives of spiders and scorpions survived it all.  Even more remarkably, they did so without the benefit of an immune system.  What they had instead has made them incredibly valuable, and today places this species previously considered only good for bait at ultimate risk.

Horseshoe crab blood sells for $15,000 a quart.  It also happens to be bright blue because it is copper, rather than iron-based, but what makes it really special is a remarkable adaptation that compensates for the crab's inability to produce antibodies.  Horseshoecrab.org tells us how:

"As we know, seawater is a virtual 'bacterial soup'. Typical near-shore areas that form the prime habitat of the horseshoe crab can easily contain over one billion Gram-negative bacteria per milliliter of seawater. Thus, the horseshoe crab is constantly threatened with infection. Unlike mammals, including humans, the horseshoe crab lacks an immune system; it cannot develop antibodies to fight infection. However, the horseshoe crab does contain a number of compounds that will bind to and inactivate bacteria, fungi, and viruses. The components of LAL are part of this primitive "immune" system. The components in LAL, for example, not only bind and inactivate bacterial endotoxin, but the clot formed as a result of activation by endotoxin provides wound control by preventing bleeding and forming a physical barrier against additional bacterial entry and infection. It is one of the marvels of evolution that the horseshoe crab uses endotoxin as a signal for wound occurrence and as an extremely effective defense against infection."

Since the 1960s, when researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute - located down at the mouth of the Bay - first isolated the compounds in horseshoe crab blood that respond to bacteria, an extract has provided the most reliable test used by the pharmaceutical and medical device industries to detect sterilization resistant endotoxin bacteria. This has been extraordinarily important for human health, but it has been hard on the crabs.

My sister had a summer internship at Chatham's Pleasant Bay in the 1980s where she studies the effects of harvesting on its horseshoe crab population.   It is possible to harvest horseshoe crab blood by syringe without killing the animal (anywhere from 3%-15% mortality has been recorded and up to 30% of the animal's blood is taken each time), but over harvesting and excessive extraction have combined to produce crashes in local Atlantic horseshoe crab populations from Delaware to Cape Cod.  It doesn't help the species that it swarms breeding beaches during the full moon in late Spring and can be easily gathered  in shallow water with clam rakes and dredges.  In some areas, there are no longer enough horseshoe crabs in the environment to support bird species like the Red Knot that depend on their eggs as an important food source.  According to A DC Birding Blog, New Jersey now bans horseshoe crab harvesting and Massachusetts plans to cut its quota in half.  The Cape Cod Times had a story last April that reported:

"Massachusetts' current horseshoe crab quota is 330,377 annually, second only to New York's at 366,272. Delaware is one of the states that has cut back its harvest, setting its quota at 100,000. Delaware harvested 76,663 horseshoe crabs last year, a more than 75 percent drop from 2003.

In Massachusetts, about 70,000 animals were landed in 2004. That more than doubled to 150,000 last year. Most of the increase was shipped out of state by bait dealers.

A spokeswoman for the state Executive Office of Environmental Affairs would not specify yesterday exactly what the new regulations would be but said the limit would be about 150,000, the same as landings for last year."

This same article says that animals harvested for their blood and returned to the water alive are not counted toward the state's quota.

Some crab areas appear to be significantly depleted, while others are rebounding.  There is still a market for horseshoe crabs as bait.  Anecdotal observation along our stretch of Buzzard's Bay suggests that there are far fewer crabs in our waters than were present in the 1970s.   We do not find the washed up shells of their young anymore while beach combing as we used to do.  I would need to be out on the beach in early June with the full moon above to be certain, but for a species that is so central to maintaining a healthy coastal marine ecosystem to leave so little trace of itself along our shore today is reason enough for concern.

An Aunt Kate Day

What a day for sailing this would be!  The wind is blowing across the bay from the West, so there would be no need to tack against it to gain the Islands on the horizon or run before it to return.  Later it will shift to its customary southwest breeze. The sky is free of haze or cloud, and the air is clean and bright. Ospreys soar along the bluff and call out in the wind.  How my earthbound feet want to fly across the waves with a sail for wings.

There is a curious craft with a red sail making its way toward the west end of the Cape Cod Canal as I write.  She's made of wood - that much is clear through the scope by the great picture windows facing the bay - but her sail is stiffened throughout with stays like those of a Chinese Junk.  There actually is, or was, a Junk that sailed the waters of Buzzards Bay when I was growing up.  There are sloops and yawls among the pleasure craft today, and on very windy afternoons the windsurfers dance across the waves like skipping stones. Later today I may see a great rainbow-hued spinnaker billowing before the mast of some inbound vessel. 

To my mind there are not enough sailing craft in the bay today for such a glorious late summer Sunday.  Some of the best sailing weather is yet to come, in autumn wind with the whitecaps foaming, but today would be a day to savor summer to the dregs with the wind in my face and the blue water sparkling alongside. 

Tonight, if the weather holds, I'll bring the children down to the beach and into the water to swim as we watch the stars.  Maybe there will still be phosphorus glowing around us as there were earlier in summer.  Maybe the pale face of Jupiter will leave a shining path on the face of the water. 

My Great Great Aunt Kate, so I am told though she died when I was still an infant, had a favorite psalm for days like these:

"This is the day that the Lord hath made.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it!"

Such days as these are "Aunt Kate Days".

Faded Spines, Musty Memories

Blogging is light this holiday weekend.  We are down at Windrock, rusticating in the big house by the sea, and unlike of previous visit we have the place largely to ourselves.  There are renters in the little house - the parents of the groom at a wedding being held down the beach on Indian Neck, but the big house is ours and each of we four have found time to carve out for ourselves in various cozy corners to settle down with our favorite Windrock things.  For Elias, this means rediscovering the collection of toys, begun when my aunts and uncle were small and carrying on to the present day.  For Emily, this means finding the dress up clothes and then settling in with a good book done up like Lady Jane Kropotkin or a pirate chieftain.  For Viv, it means having the large kitchen table to spread out her PTO and library plans and enjoy the luxury of space to work.

I go for the bookshelves.  I seldom bring something to read with me to Windrock because like all great summer homes the place is teeming with reading material.  It is less like the second hand bookshop it was when my grandmother lived here and had all her faculties - there has been a significant purge of utter clutter to get the big house in shape for renters - but still, the "children's room" has books stacked to the ceiling on cases that were extended using boards and bricks, and in "the library" the shelves actually have some rhyme and reason to what they contain. 

There is, for instance, most of an entire stack dedicated to field guides and books of the sea.  Among those for the flora and fauna of our part of North America are volumes that speak of the travels of family members, like the guide to the Birds of West Africa used in the 1970s by my Uncle Rob when he was collecting samples in Nigeria and Egypt with Yale's Peabody Museum.  There is also a tattered, cover-less paperback that I am astounded and delighted survived the last "dumptser weekend" and that has its own story to tell.  It was published in a series of standard military books and manuals by the Science Service and Infantry Journal, Washington during World War II and is entitled; "What To Do Aboard a Transport".  From the CoPublisher's forward:

(T)here can be few who have not been curious about many of the shipboard sights and activities this book describes.  It answers most of the questions that come to the mind of the landsman at sea - questions often not answered before the transport (or other ship) leaves port...At the very least, "What To Do Aboard a Transport" will help speed the slow days of voyage.

My grandfather took it with him to the Pacific and used it to teach himself celestial navigation, a skill he later used to help a navy plane find its way back across the dark Ocean to its island base when it lost the services of its navigator.

The books in this house hold the history of the people who have stayed here and the families who have lived here.  My grandparents purchased Windrock together with its contents, and some of these were books.  The inside plates of many of the grand old Wyeth illustrated copies of "The Black Arrow" and "Treasure island" bear the names of the various members of the Fish family, the previous owner, and a few even of the Lyman family, the first owner who build the house in the late 19th century.  Some have the names of the Boston bookseller, and others reveal their origins as coming from the estates of other branches of the family.  A few are very old - 17th century with dry leather bindings - and among the more recent of these sort I found the volume XVII of a year's worth of St Nicholas Magazine, published by The Century for boys and girls in the latter decades of the 1800s.  There are thrilling tales of adventure, death at sea and ivory hunting in central Africa - just the thing for eager young minds.  One of the authors is a young Theodore Roosevelt, and his piece about buffalo hunting during the twilight of the great herds is illustrated by Frederick Remington.

Adventure stories abound in this house.  All the Jack London you can handle, stories of impossible exposure and survival after being torpedoed, stories like "The Sea Adler" about a WWI German wind powered commerce raider, all wait for new eyes to discover them.  Most of these books are like those in your local library that are almost never checked out, but unlike your local library's collection these shabby volumes have not been tossed out or sold.  They are the soul of the house, the thing that keeps it from becoming a sterile rental that was never a home. 

This weekend, instead of blogging I will be casting my eye across their faded spines, eager to see where they take me.

A Pause In Praise of Place

Maggie's Farm in all its glory.

Tremont Nails, originally from Wareham, MA,  make it to Deb's homestead in Minnesota.

Chet Raymo has been to the mountaintop.

Sissy Willis, as only she can, serves up her sumptuous blend of cultural, social, economic and political history.

Sarpy Sam at home on the range.

Migratory restlessness somewhere in New Jersey.

Though our relationship to places is personal, love of land is bipartisan.

"We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat"

These are dear friends, actually, and read this blog, so to protect the innocent, let us call them Stanley and Ollie.  It has been a year since this picture was taken of these hearty lads, but it is probably too much to hope for that the statute of limitations has run out on revealing this picture to the world.  I plead a slow blog day and beg forgiveness.  As I recall you managed to stay afloat.

Wish we were fishing together this weekend, boys. In a bigger boat.

Seconds

Here is the power of place.  This group of cousins, perched on the rock by the sea, gathered in the early 1950s.  That's my mother third from the left in the back row, with Tigerhawk and Charlottesvillian's father second from the right.  More than 55 years later (with one last cousin added and one passed on), these families returned with children and grandchildren in tow.  There were too many of us for a group portrait, but there was an effort to take a 1st cousins shot (with some 2nds and 3rds and assorted friends and relations in there, too). 

Inclusion and belonging, down through the years at Windrock: Gran's greatest gifts.

"And so Castles Made of Sand Fall in the Sea, Eventually"

Those of you down the shore with your surplus of white sand may not have experienced the rare joy of a moon tide on a cobble beach.  Once we had a sand bar off Windrock, but except for these extreme low tides we don't get to see it anymore.  Littoral drift and the return of the eel grass have together changed the contour and composition inshore. 

But last weekend, two islands of sand rose from the sea and for the space of an hour there were drip castles and moats and turrets and a coliseum filled with jellyfish and hermit crabs to delight the young and old.

My cousin Margaret caught this image of my daughter Emily and the largest of the drip castles. 

"Seagulls Sing Your Hearts Away"

"Bring tea for the Tillerman
Steak for the sun
Wine for the women who made the rain come"

The grand encampment of Barker and Ogden kith and kin over the 4th of July weekend at Windrock involved so many friends and relations one needed a scorecard to keep track of them all.  Fortunately, my cousin John's wife Megan used her graphic design skills to collect and display two family trees with names dates and thumbnail photographs for practically everyone in 5 generations from my maternal great grandparents on down to a baby on the way.  Several of us provided the genealogical data and tracked down needed images, but the end result allowed us all to puzzle out such things as who went with whom and what a 2nd cousin once removed looks like.

I took fewer photographs of the festivities than I had intended, or rather I focused on recording certain stages while actively participating in others. I have no pictures of the extraordinary drip castles on the unexpected sand bar revealed by an unusually low tide, nor the swarms of children who helped to construct them or dig quahogs rooted out by searching toes.  I did not get pictures of the intergenerational baseball and soccer games that sprang up on the lawn.  I had many conversations with wonderful people, and so have no regrets on that score.

"Seagulls sing your hearts away
'Cause while the sinners sin, the children play"

There were some things that defied photography, like the phosphorescence that made the still waters glow for midnight swimmers, and the fireworks that erupted up and down the shore on both sides of the bay and behind Great Neck. 

No one, I believe, wanted any pictures of the most dramatic and terrifying event of the weekend, when the Angle of Death dipped so near we could feel the beating of its wings. My cousin Colin broke out in hives and soon went into anaphylactic shock in the water where quick heads, sound medical knowledge and other people's EpiPens kept him alive until the EMTs arrived.   My cousins John and Margaret happened to be with Colin when he collapsed and pulled him to shore, and they were outwardly shaking (as were we all inwardly) for hours afterward.  In our number there were an EMT, a doctor, and the head ER nurse at the local hospital (who as it happens is also Colin's mother).  My cousin Jay and my cousin Leila's husband Pete the EMT together had three EpiPens and it took two of these to have any effect.  But for them and the grace of God, we would have suffered a terrible tragedy.  The next morning when Colin walked toward us like Lazarus with his family as we laid my grandmother's remains in Earth, he was greeted with shining eyes and a round of spontaneous applause.  There was even more joy and thanksgiving in the church that Saturday from this largely secular family as we celebrated my Grandmother's life and our personal Passover.

"Oh Lord how they play and play
For that happy day, for that happy day"

There are three stones where my grandparents remains reside.  One of these is the veteran's stone that acknowledges Grandpop's service in the Pacific during WWII.  There is now another paired with it that lists Gran's full name and the Hebrew word "Mizpah", with which she used to close many a letter to loved ones away from home.  It may be translated:

"May the Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another."

The third stone comes from Windrock itself and is newly etched with her first and maiden names and years of birth and death.  It says Barker on another of its faces, and on the top are two words - "Gone Fishing" - which are less irreverent than they seem.  My Uncle Rob, when a young boy, learned about the water table in school and decided that when people are buried they could go fishing there.  This so tickled my grandfather that he said he would like those words on his tombstone, and this was remembered many decades later and dutifully done. 

Those two inscriptions are fitting bookends for these two extraordinary lives, the earthy and the ethereal, and are streams that run deep in all of our veins.

"Oh Lord how they play and play
For that happy day, for that happy day"

                                  - Cat Stevens