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  1. The Vineyard

Gay Head, November '08

Thanksgiving week on the Vineyard. One of my goals was to get up to Gay Head and find the glacial boulder that is prominent in a photograph on display on the M/V Island Home, a photo taken in 1915. I wanted to compare the landscape of today, using the boulder as a reference, with the landscape of almost 100 years ago.

I did find the boulder, after walking over an at-first daunting, very rocky beach. The rocks turned out to be of little consequence to me, however, as I am sure-footed in my Merrills. In fact, I welcome a variety of terrains with which to challenge myself. The walk down around the head of the cliffs did require much concentration; no room for dreamy gazes off to the horizon or meandering thoughts on this walk.

I've never seen this beach so strewn with rocks. Where do they come from? Do they lie beneath the sand, to be uncovered by winter storms? Do they migrate here? I think it must be the former.

Whatever the answer, it's hard to imagine that this will ever be a sandy beach again. But I know it will be.
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  • I think the attraction to this beach is that it feels - and in fact, is - very old; primal, mystical. To walk here is to walk through a depository of glacial artifacts; stones that were pushed to this location and dropped off here many thousands of years ago. These cliffs, and the shape of the hill behind - to me, anyway - suggest a rather abrupt stop in the glacier's eons-long flow.<br />
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The striations, the layers of sediment in the cliffs, suggest that one is walking in a deep, old place, perhaps even back to the beginning of time. Well, certainly a long ways back.
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  • Here's the rock I came to find, the large one on the left.
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  • The pathway to Moshup Beach. The two little white dots in this image were the first clue that I was in for a bit of rain, only a bit, as it would turn out.
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