Journal of a Sabbatical

July 27, 2000

not at the beach

Today's Reading: Cape Cod by Henry D. Thoreau

Today's Starting Pitcher: Tim Wakefield

It's raining as predicted. I am not on the beach guarding piping plovers.

I've been reading Cape Cod by Henry David Thoreau, and came across some references to piping plovers, which I thought I'd share with readers.

But if I were required to name a sound, the remembrance of which most perfectly revives the impression which the beach has made, it would be the dreary peep of the piping plover (Charadrius melodus), which haunts there. Their voices, too, are heard as a fugacious part in the dirge, which is ever played along the shore for those mariners who have been lost in the deep since first it was created. But through all this dreariness we seemed to have a pure and unqualified strain of eternal melody, for always the same strain which is a dirge to one household is a morning song of rejoicing to another. -- Thoreau, Cape Cod

Dreary? It is deep and resonant and has a certain wildness to it, but I don't experience the peep-lo call of the piping plover as dreary. Fugacious is a great word for it though.

Later on I came to a mention of the plover chicks. Thoreau captures the hatchlings perfectly. I wish I'd thought to describe them as "mere pinches of down" when I was trying to explain to that woman last week why she couldn't walk along the water line.

In summer I saw the tender young of the Piping Plover, like chickens just hatched, mere pinches of down on two legs, running in troops, with a faint peep, along the edge of the waves. -- Thoreau, Cape Cod

I put Cape Cod aside for awhile and turned to the Thoreau home page to search for journal entries that mention piping plovers.

The piping plover running and standing on the beach, and a few mackerel gulls skimming over the sea and fishing. Josh (?) pears ("juicy," suggests Small) just begun; few here compared with Provincetown; do not cook them. -- Thoreau, Journal July 7, 1855

I think he means don't cook the the pears, not the plovers or the gulls.

The piping plover, as it runs half invisible on the sand before you, utters a shrill peep on an elevated key (different birds on different keys), as if to indicate its locality from time to time to its kind, or it utters a succession of short notes as it flies low over the sand or water. Ever and anon stands still tremblingly, or teeteringly, wagtail-like, turning this way and that. Thoreau, Journal June 16, 1857

When I read the Cape Cod passage about the call to Nancy, she remembered that Thoreau found the piping plovers on Plum Island as well as the island itself dreary too. That got us wondering if he found beaches dreary. I suppose in the 19th century when shipwrecks were always washing up onshore it was pretty dreary.

Plum Island, at the mouth of this river, to whose formation, perhaps, these very banks have sent their contribution, is a similar desert of drifting sand, of various colors, blown into graceful curves by the wind. It is a mere sand-bar exposed, stretching nine miles parallel to the coast, and, exclusive of the marsh on the inside, rarely more than half a mile wide. There are but half a dozen houses on it, and it is almost without a tree, or a sod, or any green thing with which a countryman is familiar. The thin vegetation stands half buried in sand, as in drifting snow. The only shrub, the beach-plum, which gives the island its name, grows but a few feet high; but this is so abundant that parties of a hundred at once come from the main-land and down the Merrimack, in September, pitch their tents, and gather the plums, which are good to eat raw and to preserve. The graceful and delicate beach-pea, too, grows abundantly amid the sand, and several strange, moss-like and succulent plants. The island for its whole length is scalloped into low hills, not more than twenty feet high, by the wind, and, excepting a faint trail on the edge of the marsh, is as trackless as Sahara. There are dreary bluffs of sand and valleys ploughed by the wind, where you might expect to discover the bones of a caravan. Schooners come from Boston to load with the sand for masons’ uses, and in a few hours the wind obliterates all traces of their work. Yet you have only to dig a foot or two anywhere to come to fresh water; and you are surprised to learn that woodchucks abound here, and foxes are found, though you see not where they can burrow or hide themselves. I have walked down the whole length of its broad beach at low tide, at which time alone you can find a firm ground to walk on, and probably Massachusetts does not furnish a more grand and dreary walk. On the seaside there are only a distant sail and a few coots to break the grand monotony. A solitary stake stuck up, or a sharper sand-hill than usual, is remarkable as a landmark for miles; while for music you hear only the ceaseless sound of the surf, and the dreary peep of the beach-birds. -- Thoreau, A Week on the Condord and Merrimack Rivers (Tuesday)

 

Oh no! Another dead crow! Hopkinton. West Nile conquers all. Deet-tails coming soon.

It's already tomorrow, but those wacky Red Sox managed to squeak out a win in extra innings. Boy am I gonna be tired tomorrow, er this, morning.