To Provincetown
From the Executive Director Adam R. Moore
A hallmark of island life is the off-island jaunt. A day trip dispels monotony, and adds a dash of freedom to what can sometimes become a long term upon the Island. Even the thought of being upon the mainland, where one could take a left onto Route 6 and drive west all the way to the fringe of Yosemite National Park, instills a spirit of adventure in the day-tripper.
On this perfect October Saturday, we were bound for Provincetown. On so many of our off-Island trips, I zip right through the Upper Cape, aiming to cross the Cape Cod Canal as rapidly as possible. And when I travel in the other direction, I seldom find myself past the mid-Cape, usually ending my trip in Hyannis, or perhaps at Camp Greenough, just a little further ahead in Yarmouth. Yet on this day, our goal was to go all the way up, all the way to Provincetown. Despite living on Martha’s Vineyard for most of the past 22 years, I hadn’t been to Provincetown since 1982.
We had one car parked in the Palmer Avenue parking lot in Falmouth, so we left our Island car in Vineyard Haven and strolled down the sidewalks of the town, toward the sea, with the bridge of the Island Home towering above the end of Union Street. I stopped in at Leslie’s Pharmacy for a copy of the Financial Times Weekend, to read during our ferry trip.
On this particular trip what struck me was how uniformly jolly everyone was. Perhaps it was the lovely weather, perhaps it was the fact that summer had passed, and a beautiful and uncrowded autumn had presented itself, but all aboard seemed full of mirth. We crowded into a booth, and spoke with a police officer, a librarian, a landscape architect, a house-builder. This general good feeling continued as we disembarked, where a man with a broken foot limped down the ramp, regaling me in salty language with tales of how many fish he had caught in the Derby, and onto a jam-packed shuttle bus where I hung onto the overhead rail as if I were riding a New York subway car. Even a couple heading to a memorial service seemed happy, noting that although bound for a solemn affair, they would take a moment to provision themselves at the French bakery in Falmouth.
As one approaches Provincetown, the excitement builds. First one passes Eastham, where the National Park Service Visitor Center is worth a visit of its own. Then Wellfleet, with its great bay brimming with oysters, and then the narrow spit of Truro, a town which bears no resemblance to its namesake, the cathedral city of Cornwall. At Truro, the land narrows, and then Provincetown beckons. One passes Pilgrim Lake, and then the towering sand dunes begin. I spotted perhaps a dozen cars parked beside the road for the Dune Shack Trail. I recalled climbing these mountains of sand when I was a boy, and sliding down them on pieces of cardboard.
Presently the Pilgrim Monument appeared in the distance, and shortly thereafter we found ourselves walking upon Commercial Street, still busy and filled with people and activity, even in October. All I remembered of Commercial Street from my childhood was eating ice cream in a tree-lined park beside the Town Hall, and shopping for shark’s teeth and other treasures in a very odd store that featured a large diving bell hanging in the rear.
We savored our day as tourists. We walked the narrow streets to the Pilgrim Monument and its associated museum, and climbed the ramps and steps to the viewing perch. From high aloft, we saw the entirety of Cape Cod Bay, and the skyline of distant Boston. The ascent is a mix of steps and gentle ramps. At the base, a museum chronicles the history of Provincetown.
Back on Commercial Street, Provincetown bustled. People spilled from the stores onto sidewalks, and from sidewalks onto the streets. We strolled about, wandering in and out of the variety of shops, and had lobster bisque at the Governor Bradford Pub. We toured the Provincetown Public Library, which, on its second floor, features an actual half-size replica of the schooner Rose Dorothea. There was one art gallery after another, and the town reminded me a bit of Cornwall’s St. Ives.
What most captivated me, though, was the Province Lands. The Province Lands are a portion of the Cape Cod National Seashore. With well-maintained paths and roads and visitor facilities, the National Park Service has done a magnificent job of preserving this natural area and presenting it to the public, for appreciation and for enjoyment.
Although I live upon a nature preserve (Quansoo Farm in Chilmark), and Martha’s Vineyard features the same vegetation and the same type of glacial landscape as Cape Cod, the Province Lands seemed to me to be utterly wild. Perhaps it is the juxtaposition of these untamed lands, so close to the densely-built harbor town, or the thought that these mobile, parabolic dunes, might somehow engulf the town beneath a mountain of sand, yet the Province Lands appeared to me as a wilderness indeed.
At the Province Lands, a great beach stretches in a broad arm, reaching into Cape Cod Bay, and forming a protected harbor. On the way to Race Point, here and there a few sturdy cedars have taken root, along with clumps of beach grass, and a pitch pine or two, and in many places the earth bore no vegetation at all, just bare sand, ready to be swept aside and moved about in the next week’s gale. In some places forests are more established, yet to the south, toward Truro, rise acres of towering, windswept, barren dunes.
On Martha’s Vineyard, some 30 percent of the Island remains both undeveloped and unprotected. There still remain opportunities to set aside for conservation some of the Island’s remaining wild landscapes. I returned from this visit to Provincetown thinking of the Province Lands, and yearning to set aside, for future generations, such awe-inspiring natural lands on this Island. These landscapes still remain, and the opportunities are here.