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Happy Birthday to Me, First Encounter, Eastham & Fort Hill Trail, Climate Change Grants, Copley Submission

The day before yesterday was my birthday. Which is my sorry excuse for not being further along with the painting I intended to post with this blog. Having your birthday fall on a weekend is always extra special I think. Ever since I was little I’ve always loved my birth date. School was in session so classmates and teachers would make a little fuss over me. And it seemed to herald in the holiday season. Nowadays it seems to happen weeks before Halloween decorations show up! Many who follow this blog sent kind wishes to me and I was overwhelmed. So, thank you for all the love.

With Thanksgiving fast approaching I thought it would be cool to concentrated on my time spent in Eastham and Fort Hill. According to the National Park Service, Fort Hill is a designated national historic landmark because of its rich history and settlement use. It encompasses over 100 acres of grasslands, forest and wetlands bordering Nauset Marsh in Eastham. It’s considered one of the most scenic non-beach destinations within the Cape Cod National Seashore. The popular Fort Hill scenic overlook and trail is where I focused my attention to paint. The vision for this area is to preserve and maintain it’s character-defining features while protecting natural resources. All the while encouraging pedestrian use, public education and maintain its serenity for all to enjoy.

First Encounter, Eastham & Fort Hill Trail

On November 9, 1620, a ship named the Mayflower, 65 days out from Plymouth, England, made her landfall in the New World at what is now Coast Guard Beach. Captain Christopher Jones, Jr., knowing that his Pilgrim passengers were supposed to settle in northern Virginia, headed southeastward. Although he stood well offshore to avoid shoal waters, his ship soon became enmeshed in the worst shoals in the area, Pollock Rip. A miraculous change of wind enabled Jones to sail his ship free of the shoals, and he then turned northward to anchor in Provincetown Harbor, November 11, 1620.

Directly west and across the Cape from Fort Hill is a bronze tablet on the knoll at the north end of First Encounter Beach where Samoset Road reaches Cape Cod Bay.  It marks the location of the first encounter between the Pilgrims and the Native Americans. 

According to the Eastham Historical Society, “…on December 7, 1620 while the Mayflower remained in Provincetown, Captain Myles Standish and his party of 17 men explored along Cape Cod Bay. While camped there they were surprised by a group of Nauset Indians; arrows flew and shots were fired, but no harm resulted.” (Capt. Standish was a passenger, separatist and military officer.)

However, Wikipedia tells a different version:

“The tribe was one of the first to be visited by European seafarers, whose abduction of tribal members for slavery and introduction of diseases reduced the Nauset even before large-scale colonization of New England. The pilgrims’ first contact with the Nauset was during their landing near present-day Provincetown, when they discovered a village deserted, the Nauset being away at their winter hunting grounds. Desperately low on supplies, the pilgrims helped themselves to a cache of maize, though they left a note promising to pay for what they had stolen. The promise was eventually kept when the Nauset returned months later. The Nauset also returned a small boy who had wandered away from the colony and become lost, an act which greatly improved relations with the colonists.” I need to delve further…

The Nauset Marsh depicted in my painting is an extensive salt water marsh. The water quality is very good and it’s a prime fishing and shell fishing area. The meadows and marshes near Fort Hill are constantly monitored for the effects of natural weather events and climate change and maintained to keep it in balance and healthy for wildlife to survive. As sea levels rise the marsh migrates landward which is natural but when parking lots and roads are in the way that can’t happen. And more extreme and more frequent dramatic weather events caused by climate change only cause more damage to the natural cycle. As a side note, the inlet into Nauset Marsh is at the southern end of Nauset Spit. World-renowned nature writer, Henry Beston, wrote The Outermost House from his beach cottage located here.

Climate Change Grants

Wicked Local Eastham just published an article last month, “Towns Receive Climate Change Grants.” In all, $2.4 million was allocated to 20 communities in Massachusetts including Eastham, Wellfleet and Chatham. Link to article is below.

Eastham will receive a $149,000 state Coastal Resilience Grant which will provide financial support to analyze vulnerabilities to climate impacts, increase awareness of these issues, plan for changing conditions and redesign vulnerable facilities/infrastructure and implement nature-based measures.

In the Cape Cod National Seashore 36 percent of the Nauset salt marsh has disappeared since 1984, as has 25 percent of the marsh in Hatches Harbor, in Provincetown and 42 percent of the marsh in Wellfleet’s Herring River system. All areas I’ve blogged about and painted.

Copley Submission

I recently finished a piece for submission to the Copley Society Member Exhibition in Boston. The theme is winter into spring so I did a watercolor of the view from our kitchen window when we lived on White Cloud Farm on the outskirts of Princeton, NJ. We were surrounded by sheep and I especially loved watching them peek out of the barn in the morning and head out to the meadows. This painting caught them doing just that at sunrise during a spring thaw. The painting was completed quite quickly as usually happens when I’m familiar with and love a particular landscape. I’ve heard that same sentiment expressed by many artists over the years. Anyway, I hope it gets juried in. I loved doing it regardless.