The cliff I write of and the bordering beach face the Atlantic on
the forearm of the Cape. This outer earth is now scarce more than a
great dyke or wall some twenty-five miles long and only three and four
miles wide. At Provincetown it rises from the sea, beginning there in
a desert of dunes and sand plains of the ocean’s making. These sands
curve inland toward the continent, bending toward Plymouth even as a
hand may be bent down at the wrist, and Provincetown harbour lies in
the curve of palm and fingers. At Truro, the wrist of the Cape--the
forearm simile being both exact and inescapable--the land curve falls
from the east and west down through an arc to the north and south,
and the earth cliff begins and rises rather suddenly to its greatest
elevation. South by east from the Highland Light to Eastham and Nauset
Coast Guard Station, the rampart fronts the sea, its sky line being
now a progress of long undulations, now a level as military as a
battlement, hollows and mounded hills here and there revealing the
barren moorland character of the country just above. At Nauset, the
cliff ends, the sea invades the narrowing land, and one enters the
kingdom of the dunes.
[Illustration: _The Beach_]
The cliff ends, and a wall of ocean dunes carries on the beach. Five
miles long, this wall ends at a channel over whose entrance shoals the
ocean sweeps daily into a great inlet or lagoon back of the dunes, an
inlet spaced with the floors of tidal islands and traced with winding
creeks--the inlet of Eastham and Orleans. Very high tides, covering the
islands, sometimes turn this space into bay. Westward over the channels
and the marshland one looks to the uplands of the Cape, here scarce a
good two miles wide. At Eastham, the land is an open, rolling moor.
West over this lies Cape Cod Bay. A powerful tribe of Indians, the
Nausets, once inhabited this earth between the seas.
Outermost cliff and solitary dune, the plain of ocean and the far,
bright rims of the world, meadow land and marsh and ancient moor: this
is Eastham; this the outer Cape. Sun and moon rise here from the sea,
the arched sky has an ocean vastness, the clouds are now of ocean, now
of earth. Having known and loved this land for many years, it came
about that I found myself free to visit there, and so I built myself a
house upon the beach.
My house stood by itself atop a dune, a little less than halfway south
on Eastham bar. I drew the home-made plans for it myself and it was
built for me by a neighbour and his carpenters. When I began to build,
I had no notion whatever of using the house as a dwelling place. I
simply wanted a place to come to in the summer, one cosy enough to
be visited in winter could I manage to get down. I called it the
Fo’castle. It consisted of two rooms, a bedroom and a kitchen-living
room, and its dimensions over all were but twenty by sixteen. A brick
fireplace with its back to the wall between rooms heated the larger
space and took the chill off the bedroom, and I used a two-burner oil
stove when cooking.
My neighbour built well. The house, even as I hoped, proved compact
and strong, and it was easy to run and easy to heat. The larger room
was sheathed, and I painted the wainscoting and the window frames a
kind of buff-fawn--a good fo’castle colour. The house showed, perhaps,
a somewhat amateur enthusiasm for windows. I had ten. In my larger
room I had seven; a pair to the east opening on the sea, a pair to
the west commanding the marshes, a pair to the south, and a small
“look-see” in the door. Seven windows in one room perched on a hill of
sand under an ocean sun--the words suggest cross-lights and a glare;
a fair misgiving, and one I countered by the use of wooden shutters
originally meant for winter service but found necessary through the
year. By arranging these I found I could have either the most sheltered
and darkened of rooms or something rather like an inside out-of-doors.
In my bedroom I had three windows--one east, one west, and one north to
Nauset light.
To get drinking water, I drove a well pipe directly down into the dune.
Though the sea and the beach are alongside, and the marsh channels
course daily to the west, there is fresh water here under the salty
sand. This water varies in quality, some of it being brackish, some of
it sweet and clear. To my great delight, I chanced upon a source which
seems to me as good water as one may find here anywhere. Beneath the
floor, the pipe descended into a bricked-up and covered pit housing a
pet-cock through which I drained the water from the pump in freezing
weather (On bitter days I simply pumped a few pails full and stood
them in the sink, and drained the pump immediately.). I had two oil
lamps and various bottle candlesticks to read by, and a fireplace
crammed maw-full of driftwood to keep me warm. I have no doubt that the
fireplace heating arrangement sounds demented, but it worked, and my
fire was more than a source of heat--it was an elemental presence, a
household god, and a friend.
In my larger room, I had a chest of drawers painted an honest carriage
blue, a table, a wall bookcase, a couch, two chairs, and a rocker. My
kitchen, built yacht fashion all in a line, stood at my southern wall.
First came a dish and crockery cupboard, then a space for the oil
stove--I kept this boxed in when not in use--then a shelf, a porcelain
sink, and the corner pump. Blessed pump! It never failed me or indulged
in nerves.
Using a knapsack, I carried my supplies on my own shoulders. There is
no road through the dunes, and, even if there were, no one would have
made deliveries. West of the dunes, it is true, there exists a kind of
trail on which Fords may venture, but even the most experienced of
the villagers are wary of it and tell of being mired there or stuck in
the sand. Nevertheless, my lumber came by this trail, and now and then
I could get my oil cans carried down by a neighbour who had a horse
and cart. These helps, however, were but occasional, and I counted
myself fortunate to have had them at all. My knapsack remained the only
ever-ready wagon of the dunes. Twice a week, by arrangement, a friend
met me at Nauset Station with a car, took me shopping to Eastham or
Orleans, and brought me back again to Nauset. And there I would pack my
milk and eggs and butter and rolls--being very careful as to which was
sitting on which--and strike off down the beach along the breakers.
The top of the mound I built on stands scarce twenty feet above
high-water mark, and only thirty in from the great beach. The coast
guards at Nauset, a scant two miles away, were my only neighbours.
South lay the farther dunes and a few far-away and lonely gunning
camps; the floor of marsh and tide parted me on the west from the
village and its distant cottages; the ocean besieged my door. North,
and north alone, had I touch with human things. On its solitary dune
my house faced the four walls of the world.
My house completed, and tried and not found wanting by a first Cape Cod
year, I went there to spend a fortnight in September. The fortnight
ending, I lingered on, and as the year lengthened into autumn, the
beauty and mystery of this earth and outer sea so possessed and held
me that I could not go. The world to-day is sick to its thin blood
for lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water
welling from the earth, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot.
In my world of beach and dune these elemental presences lived and had
their being, and under their arch there moved an incomparable pageant
of nature and the year. The flux and reflux of ocean, the incomings
of waves, the gatherings of birds, the pilgrimages of the peoples of
the sea, winter and storm, the splendour of autumn and the holiness of
spring--all these were part of the great beach. The longer I stayed,
the more eager was I to know this coast and to share its mysterious and
elemental life; I found myself free to do so, I had no fear of being
alone, I had something of a field naturalist’s inclination; presently
I made up my mind to remain and try living for a year on Eastham Beach.