Tag: Raven Harper

"Cape Cod is a narrow glacial peninsula, running 40 miles out to sea, its frail and perishable coast of sand cliffs and earth continually crumbled and torn down by the wind and the pounding ocean, but it is anchored to the bottom of the world by rock and a pre-glacial clay foundation that is one of the 'ancient drainage divides of the country.' Over this the glaciers piled hills and dug valleys, spread and raked a top-dressing of sand and debris that in time became the 'fat and lustie' soil that Bradford speaks of. "

"I never saw an autumnal landscape so beautifully painted as this was. It was like the richest rug imaginable spread over an uneven surface; no damask nor velvet, nor Tyrian dye or stuffs, nor the work of any loom, could ever match it. There was the incredibly bright red of the huckleberry, and the reddish brown of the bayberry, mingled with the bright and living green of small pitch pines, and also the duller green of the bayberry, boxberry, and plum; the yellowish green of the shrub oaks, and the various golden and yellow and fawn-colored tints of the birch and maple and aspen, each making its own figure, and, in the midst, the few yellow sandslides on the sides of the hills looked like the white floor seen through rents in the rug." -Henry David Thoreau

"The vegetation of Cape Cod has changed mightily, too. As the Pilgrims saw it, the northern part of Cape Cod was 'wooded to the brinke of the sea...' It had large trees, 'Okes, Pines, Sassafras, Juniper, Birch, Holly, Vines, some Ash, Walnut...' Stumps of large size were remembered in 1802. Large trees in small number existed in Provincetown around 1934. But they are all gone now."