gateway to the Cape......

Stretching like a well muscled arm off the lower eastern coast of Massachusetts is the beautiful landscape of Cape Cod. It's location is exposed to the elements of Atlantic Ocean temperaments; and it has seen it's share hurricanes, blizzards, and worse of all, the tourists who claim the sandy shores with "cape" and stilt houses. Because much of it was unspoiled beauty, many New Englanders favored it for the sandy beaches, and because they could escape the thickly settled areas of the Northeast and feel like they had gone to the "country seashore". The only problem is the tourists never stopped coming and the land became prime real estate.

During the Pleistocene Epoch, the great ice age that began over one and a half million years ago, the Cape was fully engrossed under ice. When the last continental ice sheets melted away, the water returned to the ocean basin and the sea level rose. Within time, the rising sea began to drown out the land left behind by the ice. With waves attacking the shore and eroding away the glacial deposits, sand was transported and redeposited to form bays protected by barrier splits and islands. Within these bays, marshes grew as the sea rose, and the remaining glacial landforms make up the landscape of the Cape that we know today.

It would be given the name of Cape Cod by Bartholomew Gosnold in 1602 when he settled on the Elizabeth Islands, southwest of what is known as Woods Hole now. Visited by Samuel de Champlain in 1605, the Cape was detailed in description and charts which would help present day scientists to determine the rate of change the land of Nauset Beach Spit and Nauset marsh had made over the years. The Cape would also be the first landing spot of the Pilgrims before they chose to abandon it for more fertile and less sandy lands. Although it had potable water and food, it would not sustain them and they chose to resettle across the bay in 1620 on more stable shores, calling their settlement Plymouth. There were other Europeans who had settled along the shores dating back as far as 1498, but none would be more successful than the Pilgrims and the treaties they established with the Nauset Indians (in 1621) for forty years.

Early settlers to Cape Cod were from deforested lands of Europe and took full advantage of the forests of the Cape for fuel, housing and shipbuilding. Unlike the rest of New England, and because the forests were never really that big, the thin sandy soil was extremely vulnerable to wind erosion. An abundant amount of clearing and topsoil loss occurred over the years, and by the early 1800's, laws had to be enacted to protect what grazing land was left. It would also promote the planting of beach grasses. From the mid 1800's till 1951 over 70% of the land was forested, yet the trend reversed itself again, and residential as well as commercial development, in recent times, has decreased the forests by 100 square miles (about 25% of the Cape).

My first memories of the Cape date back to the 1960's when we would spend our summers there with our cousins. It would be at a cottage my Grandfather had nailed together out of two cranberry shacks (at least that was the legend I was always told), and was located just minutes from the beach. It is no secret that I am a beach lover, and always have been, so jaunts down to the shoreline were a morning daily event for us all summer long.... except for Sunday when we had to attend church first.

This was where I would learn to dig for clams and accept the risk of coming home with bleeding fingers at the razor-sharp shells. We had to be careful though, as we never had a license to take them off the beach. Hiding them in our pails we'd sneak off through a back route home and deposit them into Grandmas kitchen over expressed glees of what good catches we had. It really never amounted to much, and most times Grandpa would catch a ride to the nearest fishery to supplement our meager findings. Being of Italian decent, Grandma would put just about anything and everything into a marinara sauce, as pasta was a daily staple with every noonday meal. Many times there were sauces that included our daily catch.

Needless to say, mealtime was a required event, as Grandma spent time from the moment she woke up till serving time over the hot stove in her kitchen. While we were flapping and rollicking around the beach or huge yard to play in, with boundless energy, she would be preparing a feast for six adults and eight children. Being of fair skin, she had to be careful of any sun exposure so she never joined us at the beach. That was never a problem for the rest of us as we had "olive" skin, and could stand the hours outside bolstering our already tanned skin.

When we became old enough to drive, we would cross the bridges that separated the mainland of Massachusetts by a canal to the actual Cape lands. Our little town of Wareham was known as the "gateway to the Cape", but technically, "not on The Cape". The Bourne and Sagamore Bridges would bring us to less populated areas, real funny looking scrub pines, and even better beaches. Day trips to Falmouth and even the tip of Provencetown to see the dunes, grassy marshes, and quaint towns along the way were fascinating and filled with picturesque landscapes. The Cape was always our second home, no matter where we lived. It is the one home that has remained in my family our whole life.

When my Grandparents became too old to maintain the cottage by themselves, they deeded it over to my brothers and myself for care, and it has remained that way for the last twenty years. I don't spend time there anymore as the distance is too far for me to pop in for a weekend. However, I still think about it often and wonder about the changes I hear about. The road that lead down to our cottage used to be mostly forest and marshland, and it remained that way throughout all my childhood as well as most of my adulthood. I've heard that it is all subdivisions and condos now.... nothing I'd recognize if I were make the trek on my own. In a way I find it somewhat sad now, because my Grandpa used to walk this road and search the woods for fresh mushrooms. He knew the difference between the poisonous and harmless ones, and they ended up in the food that Grandma prepared. Like my Grandparents and my parents, the mushrooms and little country road have passed through the annals of time. The little cottage still remains, and amazingly enough, it has held up through several hurricanes; although.... it's age is showing.

It's been eight years since I've last seen the Cape, my second home, and the gateway town I spent my summers in. I can hardly believe that so much time has passed, and it makes me realize that I do miss the area terribly. So much so, that I wonder if I'll recognize anything whenever I do get the chance to return for a vacation........