Greetings far, wide, and especially locally, as this is a
limitless local adventure.
Discovery requires reporting. Reporting demands discovery. Such
an energy spiral propels the toddler and the scientist to share his novelties. I
am an aspiring investigator, bent on extending my curiosity in partnership with
you.
I anticipate discoveries of things that are and things that
might be, relative to Halibut Point, a jutting in the Massachusetts
coast near my Gloucester
home. These will be things of the past, present and future, known tangibly or
otherwise.
From Halibut Point you can look north to Mount Agamenticus
in Maine or
west to the unusual spectacle of ocean sunsets over the East Coast. Many
visitors bring optical scopes to bring distant sights closer. Being on the tip
of the continent, on the edge of rock and sky, it also nudges introspection as
when the optical device is reversed to make close things tiny.
Halibut Point is actually across the Town Line in Rockport. Much
of it is now a State Park or held by The Trustees of Reservations, which means that
you too can walk there to savor interesting encounters, internal or external.
It is an uncommonly stimulating place.
Though our acquaintance has been long I formed this declaration
of investigation just a year ago. I wanted to give compass to my retirement
from the profession of landscape gardener. These researches would be
purposeful, outdoorsy, an easy ride on the bike I didn’t own yet. I would be
able to enjoy Nature without having to offer improvements or other types of
intervention. I imagined pursuing an inventory of all its features, animal,
mineral and vegetable.
I was shaping a project reminiscent of Nature Merit Badge,
which directed us Scouts to know intimately a locale of five acres or so. But my
current project would proceed more expansively to reflect the grandeur of
Halibut Point and my many seasons of life since adolescence.
There had been a precipitating event. The Cape Ann Museum
mounted an exhibit that summer of paintings and poems by Marsden Hartley, who
refreshed his artistic muse in Gloucester’s
core wildlands, Dogtown. From his solitary sojourns there in the 1930s Hartley
made the rocky barrens accessible and experiential to me. I immediately
thought, “I know a place to take such a chance….All I need to do is learn how
to paint and write.” Halibut Point would be my ground.
To keep the ambition reasonable I started with a camera
while other aesthetic capabilities took their time to surface. The camera drew
me on many satisfying rambles through the winter to notice the subtleties of
light on quarry walls, the expressive qualities of ice, and the intrepid
livelihoods of seabirds.
Unexpectedly I came to understand the necessity of adding the
human presence on Halibut Point to my inventory. There is prominent evidence of
farming and industry from bygone days, of coastal defense, of public recreation
and private largesse. A little research pointed to layered stories of the
Native American presence, colonial settlement, slavery, immigration, all manner
of boom-and-bust ventures playing out on this very spot as the occupation
evolved. Enterprise
has quieted now, but many more people visit than ever before.
How is it that the hickory and tupelo found their way back?
September 23, 2013
“…to myself I seem to
have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now
and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst
the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” Isaac Newton
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