Plum Island Sound, below left, and the Ipswich River, right, are seen here from a helicopter at 1000-feet. Below right, covered with cottages, is Little Neck. Forested Crane’s Hill juts out from the right. Beyond it is Cranes Beach. Rockport can be seen in the background. The southern end of Plum Island is on the left.
MST photo

Water Closet for 10-11-13 A Bit of Heaven

A favorite subject of the Water Closet has been the wondrous mouth and surrounds of our Ipswich River. Plum Island Sound waters from several rivers, creeks¹, and the sea are surrounded by beaches, hills, salt marshes, tidal flats, and sand dunes all within a mile radius.  On ebb tides, this rich mix exits in just over six hours to the ocean.  A few hours later the displaced waters are replaced by cold sea water.  In any season the views of all this from the mouth’s encircling drumlins; Tilton Hill, Castle Hill, Steep Hill, Little Neck, Plover Hill, and North Ridge delight, in storms excite, and remind us how lucky we are to live nearby. One stalwart Stream Teamer loads her kayak on car at every opportunity and makes for the Sound and its feeder creeks, rivers, and ocean.  There are few such necessary breaks in her busy life. Air smelling of seaweed and salt marsh grasses, and bracing cold water just a few inches away, restore her soul and that of thousands of others each year who go there to hike on the beaches, to swim or pick up shells, to dig clams, to rake for oysters, to hunt ducks, to gather free mulch of salt grasses wave tossed above high water, and to catch fishes in their seasons.  Others are drawn by the birds; some birders come from across the world.  All of this can be enjoyed after just a half hour’s drive by road or a day’s paddle down the river from the middle of the Ipswich River Watershed.   Sometimes on great northeast storms the ocean’s water returns inland to us via the sky. Last week on a fine warm October day two old timers, brother and sister, a daughter and niece, and a grown grandson and nephew, in two canoes put in at the Ipswich Town Landing.

In bright morning sunlight on a just turning high tide, they, with the ebb’s and westerly breeze’s help, paddled around the landing-protecting peninsula of ledge and turned east.  Tall cord grass on the upper edges of flanking banks had turned to a fine straw yellow that glistened in the sun.  All seemed right with the world, troubles trailed behind in their vessels’ invisible wakes.  Ocean swells and dunes not yet seen beckoned.   For millennia people had taken a similar course, at first in dugout canoes; later shallops, dories and schooners; and now plastic motor boats and paddle powered canoes and kayaks.  Small red and green buoys mark the meandering channel unseen at high tide.  Only those in deeper drawing craft pay careful attention.  As the water drops eight to twelve feet, the channel becomes clear and in places barely navigable even in tiny vessels.  Large areas of shallows become air brushed muddy or sandy flats or bars for a couple hours.  On these lows, clammers visit hundreds of exposed acres.  Astronomers can accurately tell them years ahead what times to go.  They will continue to do so as long as the Sun, Moon and Earth behave.  We’re speaking of a place where the effects of heavenly movements are daily felt and seen.

Perhaps these thoughts ran through the minds of the vessels’ crews as they leisurely paddled east in and out of converging salt marsh cricks and eventually to some shade cast on the noontime beach beneath Castle Hill.  In the cool protection of trees, they picnicked and enjoyed the passing scene.  Many others had come to Cranes Beach on that superb October day to hike along the shore.  Folks of all ages and stages of undress, passed singly or in groups.  The latter buoyed by salty air and sounds of surf chatted and laughed. After lunch, the kin, two from the deserts of Arizona, climbed a pleasant trail up from the shore to the handsome high fields of Steep, and then Castle Hill.  From a rise in a long northeast-southwest running lawn called “Grande Allee” they admired the mansion.²  Jack Nicholson,  Cher, and  Susan Sarandon played on this site in the movie “Witches of Eastwick” based on Ipswichian John Updike’s forgettable novel of the same name.  Thoughts of both movie and novel distracted from the beauty of what was a century ago open pasture, now heavily wooded except where mowed by its new owner, The Trustees of Reservations.³   The visitor’s eyes swung east to north as they followed the great arc of barrier beach sands from the rocky ledges of Cape Ann to those of Boars Head jutting out from Hampton.  Four centuries ago Giovanni da Verrazano, Samuel de Champlain, and John Smith after viewing from ships’ masts waxed eloquently about the same scenes.  The soon to be displaced Agawams watched those coasting ships from the drumlins.  We don’t know what they said.  The title of John Milton’s famous poem Paradise Lost comes to mind. This one now populated by different people lingers on.

1 Waters come from headwaters of Ipswich River in distant Wilmington, headwaters of the Parker River in Groveland, Merrimack River via the Plum Island River, Rowley River, Town of Essex via  Fox Creek, Eagle River, etc., and of course the Atlantic twice a day.

2  Mr. and Mrs. Richard Crane, Jr., purchased 2100 acres in 1910.  In 1949, after Mr. Crane’s death, the estate including Crane Beach was given to The Trustees of Reservations.

3  Sears, John Henry, The Physical Geography, Mineralogy and Paleontology of Essex County, Massachusetts  (The Essex Institute, Salem, 1905), is a favorite reference in the Water Closet.  If you want to know what our area looked like a century ago see Sears’ 209 photographs in this remarkable work.  The many drumlins of the county were then largely treeless pasture.

 ———————————————————————————————————- THE WATER CLOSET is provided by the Middleton Stream Team: www.middletonstreamteam.org or <MSTMiddletonMA@gmail.com>