Standing at the Edge

Recently, while I was reviewing and sorting a boxful of old photos, I came across an envelope containing a series of aerial photos of a property that my mom and two of her siblings owned on the southern coast of Massachusetts. Manomet Bluffs, the neighborhood in which their house stood, continues to stand sentinel at the very margins of our east coast, stoically resisting the relentless pounding of the Atlantic Ocean, but steadily surrendering, a clod or two at a time, its tenuous grasp. The photos I held in my hand made shockingly apparent that the little house on the bluff (affectionately - and always with droll effect - called “Blind Man’s Bluff” because my uncle was blind) was at great risk of tumbling into the sea.

They kept up the gambit for ten years, filling their tiny home with treasures found on their beach-combing adventures directly below the house in the lee of the bluff. As much as they loved that perch with its constant ocean breezes, stunning views across Cape Cod Bay, and their “4:00 somewhere” outlook on life, they knew it was a matter of time before their back yard collapsed into the Atlantic. In the back of their minds, they must have known that their small-scale measures were inadequate; the salubrious, composted slurry that they mixed up daily in their kitchen and cast over the edge of the bluff was no doubt seasoned with a fervent sense of wishful thinking, maybe even swathed in a prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It’s not hard to imagine them examining closely, but with diminishing hope, for signs that their vegetable concoction had taken literal hold of the unstable bluff. After exhausting the typical homeowners’ efforts to arrest the advance of the ocean (in your desperation irrationality can be forgiven), with hearts heavy but minds clear, they sold their little piece of heaven. 

            I live ninety miles north of Manomet Bluffs, also on the coast, but, because I’m an especially cautious person - and a worrier - not right on the water. When I take my dogs for their daily walk, I often alternate between the rail trail right behind my house and the Salisbury Beach State Reservation, 2 miles away. When the cold weather creeps into our region, usually by the end of October, I have a selfish expectation that “The Rez” will - as ever - revert to the quiet sanctuary that encourages private thought and a solitary appreciation of its natural gifts. One lap around the empty campground with a slight deviation out to the boat launch where Black Rock Creek meets the Merrimack River gives me just enough time to re-arrange my scattered thoughts, and, of course, re-invigorate me. My two dogs, likewise, lean into the activity, responding to the restorative qualities of The Rez. They’re eager (more so than I) to sprint along the seawall and cavort at river’s edge, maybe even lap at the briny water (which, of course, they’ll promptly throw up). The further away from the parking lot we move, the more immersed we become in our own pursuits. 

            So, on this particular morning, I almost don’t notice the low grumbling sound from across the river. Looking over to Plum Island on the opposite bank, I can just make out the bobbing motion of a large piece of machinery as it excavates sand. Large excavators on a barrier beach attract attention that extends beyond the surrounding communities, but people with homes directly on the ocean (Plum Island sits at the confluence of the Atlantic Ocean and the Merrimack River) are the ones who live in a constant state of anxiety; weather forecasts, for them, hold as great an interest as professional sports, and this storm season has been an especially active one. In fact, as I’m squinting to see what’s happening on Plum Island, I remember that the meteorologists warned of a one-two punch with astronomically high tides and a storm well out to sea but still near enough to menace the coast. Curious, I steer the dogs onto the beach on the ocean side and stand mutely as I take in the scene - lobster traps and buoys, giant mounds of rocked, and random lumps of wood litter the sand. Looking north along the length of the beach, I’m alarmed by the magnitude of the damage, and this one wasn’t even a direct hit. Deep gouges have been carved by the punishing waves. In both the near distance and far, I see dangling stairways - the fragile connecting tissue between homes and their coveted spots on the beach - hovering well above the sand. 

            None of this suggests a new pattern, it should be noted. Forty years ago, and ninety miles south of here, my mom and her two siblings were watching with similar apprehension as each storm pummeled their segment of the coast. And just like then, it serves to underscore that Mother Nature enjoys a lopsided advantage in her enduring battle with mankind. 

When you fall in love with the place you adopt as your home, whether that be on the ocean or a river or a prairie, you pay attention to physical changes. . . and you worry, or at least you should worry. Inasmuch as we’d like to rely on our planet’s adaptability, by continuing to invoke divine intervention (and if not that, then the ministrations of local, state, and even federal government), we fail to perceive the “use by” date; in other words, we risk everything by failing to heed environmental warnings. 

 

The Merrimack River, which I can see from my attic window, is always spoken of in terms of its ability to bounce back from adversity, the “Resilient Merrimack”, it’s often called. Surging, cascading, and gliding along its 117-mile course, it supplies over half a million people with drinking water, all the way up into central New Hampshire.  Many of the cities throughout the Merrimack Valley, in fact, owe their very existence to this river. Follow the river inland and you pass through Haverhill, Lawrence, Lowell, on into New Hampshire and cities such as Nashua, Manchester, Hooksett, Concord, Franklin. None of these cities would have endured without the empowering waters of the Merrimack.

As someone who is passionate about family history, I remain fascinated by one ancestral family’s migrations after arriving in the United States in the worst year of the Famine, 1848. My great-great-grandparents, Patrick and Mary Catherine McKenna, both textile mill operatives, moved with their five children from Portsmouth, New Hampshire to Lawrence, Massachusetts, then to Manchester, New Hampshire, and finally to Lowell, Massachusetts, all mill towns. Theirs was the quintessential immigrant experience, planting them - at least historically - in the center of one of our region’s most evocative narratives. The same river that carried contaminants to the sea also served as a conduit for thousands of factory operatives who each week, in an effort to escape the toxic air that they breathed 
into their lungs all week long, journeyed by steamboat to the pier at Black Rocks. Whenever I pass by the spot along the river where steamboats used to disgorge their passels of day-trippers, I form a mental image of the smiling, joking 19^th century travelers, giddily inhaling the sweet aroma of the Atlantic and sinking their weary feet into the therapeutic sands the moment they arrived. A single jagged line of barnacle- and kelp-encrusted wood pilings embroidered across the smooth sand is all that remains. There is enduring comfort in imagining, though, that my forbears, the McKennas, were part of the crowd that jostled with their full picnic baskets, eager to be among the first off the boat.

We can be grateful that the factories’ practice of dumping their toxins directly into this vital resource for close to 150 years was halted by the Clean Water Act of 1972. Our robust but sorely distressed Merrimack has had time to recover, but - at the same time - as the beneficiaries who enjoy a much cleaner river, it is our tacit responsibility to (at minimum) remain alert to both the obvious and concealed threats to its health.

Plum Island homeowners, I learn, in yet another effort to disrupt the sustained assault by the ocean, recently obtained a consequential legal dispensation that is permitting them to erect a barrier using giant rocks, and to install coil bags (along with wood pilings to immobilize the bags). Earlier efforts, involving the positioning of “Super Sacks”, were an unmitigated disaster; not only did they tend to rip apart, making the beach look like a dumping ground, but the general substance - plastic, tons upon tons of it, well, let’s just agree that coir, a natural alternative, is healthier for the environment. It’s not for me to pass judgment on beach homeowners’ determination to save their property. I would want to do the same. 

The little house high on Manomet Bluff, meanwhile, still stands. The vegetation clinging to its escarpment, too, has resisted - so far - the steady onslaught of severe storms. With no promising sign that the trend will reverse itself (in fact, the data make abundantly clear that ocean storms are becoming more intense and more frequent, and that sea levels are steadily rising); I nevertheless see it as a reminder of nature’s fighting spirit, and it gives me hope. 

           I hold great reverence and gratitude for the gifts of nature that I enjoy - the image of a Northern Harrier as it glides silently above the expansive flat salt marshes, the sound of seagulls quarreling over a clam, the glistening and dancing surface of the river, the sweet smell of the ocean that never gets stale. I meanwhile stand humbled in the knowledge that as bountiful and generous and feisty as nature is, as resilient as it appears in some ways, it is also very fragile. Conservationists have it right, in my mind. They evaluate the needs and wants of us humans in the broader context of what is best for the environment, and you better believe that they are paying close attention to what the earth is trying to tell us. 

It’s quite possible that I inherited my love of long views - the literal kind - from my mother. The house I grew up in was on a hill, and had 360° views; we could have our breath taken away by both sunrises and sunsets. It was possible that twice in a single day I’d be able to go to one of the windows in my bedroom, rest my chin on cupped hands, and let the colors at the horizon arrange and rearrange in front of my eyes like a kaleidoscope. Being able to put your mind on the far limits allows you to extrude the unpleasantness that life sometimes crowds in upon you. Your world transforms more easily into one of possibility. . . and hope. Similarly, for stakeholders who hope to achieve symbiosis with nature, it seems essential that we “see the forest”. As hard as it may be, in this instance we need to check our emotions and let reason prevail; put another way, we must strike the balance between measures that, say, provide relief for built landscapes and those that aim to protect the natural landscape. There’s no easy answer, and sometimes when you’re the one standing at the edge of a cliff, the long view is perhaps the only one that serves your interests. (Unless, of course, you have greater faith in divine intervention, in which case you might want to queue up a few healing prayers for Mother Mary, and pray for a miracle. Or hedge your bets, and do both.)