12-5-2010 0807 BBA Bright light patterning Vicki’s house next door. She
avulsed the tendon of her little finger trying to restrain Ruby, her black
lab, apparently in some kind of dog based encounter with Fred and Peggy, who
live near the beach. I think Peggy has appeared on her property above us
when Fuji and I have been on the beach. But she is far enough distant to not
hear her cries of ‘No Dogs!’, and thus to wave cheerfully back. We can
perhaps leave it that way..she gets her shouting, and Fuji gets her winter
beach.
But I wanted to write about the bike path today.
The bike path is really what makes my current two days a week job so
perfect. Created in the early 1970’s along the railroad right of way, the
bike path currently runs from the Steamship Authority parking lot in Woods
Hole to where route 151 intersects with rt 28A in North Falmouth..a bit over
10 miles away. If there were a bikepath trivia show, I would do well, with
my knowledge of the crossings, overpasses, and even one cow sized underpass..
At night, when the path becomes a long tunnel of darkness or a ribbon of
moonlight, depending on calendar and weather, knowing from the bumps and the
reflectors at the level crossings what is out there keeps the hour long ride
from becoming boring. And then, there is always the possibility of earphones
and music.
An hour when I can be innocent of cell phone or the need for conversational
interaction. An hour that spans as many different sceneries as the Cape has
to offer. An hour of sweat exercise, wind in the face, rain or snow or sun,
all united by a righteous need to get to work. What could be better?
But wait, it *does* get better! Last year my co-workers gave me a biking
suit, a kind of stretchy black coverall that I probably never would have
bought for myself, but that actually works to make sub freezing bicycling
fun. Plus a slick hood and padded shorts..all standard biking equipment, but
new to me. Coupled with my kayaking gloves and parka, I am good down to
below zero…beyond that I switch out to a wetsuit, or add long underwear and
rain gear. And the gloves can be supplemented with chemical handwarmers.
The history of this part of the Cape is written all along the bike path. It
began, I suppose, with the Laurentide glaciation.
As you will remember, if you live anywhere in Canada or the northern USA,
the Laurentide ice shelf formed during a Milankovich earth wobble cycle
beginning about 120,000 years ago.
http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/conn.river/iceages.html
By 19,000 BCE the ice had moshed New England about 400 feet below world
wide sea level, and the ice had reached present day New York. As it
retreated over the next 10,000 years, it left Long Island, Block Island, all
the Elizabeth Islands, Marthas Vineyard, Nomans Land, and Nantucket, as well
as all of Cape Cod behind. It left Rockport rocky, and massaged most of
Maine. The water was still mostly ice. People probably lived in the middle
of presend day Vineyard Sound..Mastadons definitely left their molars there..
Then the water returned, followed by the Kennedys, the Clintons, and the
Obamas, to mention only a few of our visitors. Soon, some people think
within a few generations, the water will reclaim a lot real estate and the
bike path too. But for now, it follows a railway engineers straight line
from point to point, transecting the aforementioned geology.
The Woods Hole steamship authority was originally restricted to a wharf
owned by the railroad. The old terminus station was right opposite the
Leeside Bar and Grill, and, on the other side of Luscomb, Sam Cahoon’s fish
market and Ships Chandlery.
Sam Cahoon’s was as close to my church as any recognized place of worship
could be. I could walk into the cool splashy room where the lobster tanks
stood on both sides, and three levels high. Sometimes there would be a real
behemoth in the last tank, the one reserved for big ‘uns. The smallest, sold
as ‘chicks’ were nearer the door. That meant the already impressive 5 pound
and up big ‘uns were cloaked in shadow. Well, Sam is dead now, so I can
confess that once I did put a chick into the big ‘uns tank, to see what
would happen. Nothing, at least not in human time. The chick hid under a big
‘un and was hard to recapture.
Or I could sidle in through the doors left open and unattended to the
street, and wander around through the supply section. Huge bales of netting,
rolls of rope, bright brass harpoon heads for sword boats, and long
unfinished poles to make the harpoon shafts. Real so’wester fisherman hats
in yellow, black, orange, and big orange overalls for big bellied men.
Paints of all sorts, and lacing it all together the smells of okum, tar,
ozone and fish. Yes, Sam, I stole a harpoon head…but put it back a day
later, after a sleepness night.
There’s a lot more of Sam Cahoons rattling around my brain, but that’s for
another day, as I ride by the expansion ferry slip that was built where the
fishmarket stood, and turn through the short term parking lot.
The longer term parking lot lies along the path, which is a car road as it
passes under the first overpass, along the head of Little Harbor, and then
under the second overpass, the one near the Church of the Messiah. It was
formerly the switch yard for the railroad, and since rail use had declined
by the time I was a teenager, I have a lot of memories of the little
clapboard building that had been used as a bunkhouse and working office for
railway workers, but which was by the late 1950’s was unused and locked with
a skeleton lock that my skeleton key fit nicely. But another time, or never,
for that.
These days, the trip NE through the lot and onto the path where it
overpasses the Nobska road is unobstructed..in summer there are tourists
getting in and out of cars and one must watch more carefully. Then we are
into the woods, and the path curves over Fay road and past the little MBL
settlements of Devils Lane and Memorial Circle, hidden in the trees of
course, and eventually past Fay Beach , reaching a long stretch where it
indeed runs right along the Shining Sea of Vineyard Sound.
Yes, and these trees are almost all second or even third growth. When I was
a kid there were a lot of scrub pines (*Pinus virginiana ) *but now its
mostly small deciduous trees like beech, black and white oak, maple, birch
and sumach. Perhaps the cape had lots of trees when Europeans first arrived,
but by the time they were taking photographs, they had all been cut. And
much of the land was in use as pasture or field, as evidenced by the stone
walls that I can now see, grey against the brown of the fallen leaves. In
the summer, the walls are all buried in catbriar and bittersweet. Now the
bright orange fruit of the bittersweet, left on the vine after the leaves
are gone, provides a delicate counterpoint to the leaves, rocks, and grey
tree trunks. And the rock walls remain, tumbled or proudly still stacked;
‘good fences make good neighbors’.
Well, the usual winds this time of year are NW, and so when I hit the
straight open stretch along the beach, with only the brackish ponds that are
part of the Trunk river drainage of Herring Pond, I generally shift gears to
pedal more comfortably. The beach is sand in the summer; now by some magic
of waves, wind, and water, the ground down round rocks that are part of the
glacial till left behind by the ice are beginning to show. Lately storms
have packed and sculpted 2 and even 3 foot high drifts of brown eelgrass
along the tideline. Mixed in are horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus)
exoskeletons, bits of bluecrab and lobster, vertebrae smelling of fish stink
and iodine, worn fishing lures, the occasional coelenterate, and a rubber
glove or boot. Not so many beer cans; 5cents a can is enough to bring ‘em
back or pick ‘em up, I guess.
Oak Bluffs and for that matter Waquoit looks close enough to touch with this
winter lower humidity and lack of smog. The wind gusts, reminding me to keep
the pressure on the pedal.
Tomorrow…on to Falmouth, the Sippiwissett Marsh, and the cranberry bog
beyond.
Best
Alan
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