LeCount Hollow: Perfect Walk!

Still Smells as Sweet?

Only fifty more days until spring!Almost February already. At this time of the year, I start craving flowers ...

Many of you responded with regret on hearing of the demise of WHAT at the harbor. Here's more information on its resurrection by a group of theater enthusiasts calling themselves the Harbor Stage Company. We can look forward to a peek during Wellfleet's first Blossoms weekend. No word yet on what will happen to the iconic WHAT sign ...

More Beach Treasure?

Yesterday we discussed good stuff you can find on a beach. What about the bad stuff? There's a new foundation that needs your support. Surfrider works to protect the oceans, and us. Check out the amazingly effective ad on its blog.

And, while we are on the subject of toxins, here's some great news: Wellfleet Selectmen just signed an e-waste resolution, which "calls on its State Representative and State Senator to support passage of a producer take-back bill for electronic waste in the current legislative session, and calls on the Legislature to develop and support legislation to require Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for all consumer electronics products, computers, TVs and household hazardous products." More than half of the towns in Massachusetts have taken this step, including Provincetown, Truro, Eastham, Orleans, Brewster and Dennis. Congratulations to the Wellfleet Selectmen for signing on and to the Recycling Committee for spurring them to make this decision.

More reason to cheer, 28 state legislatures are tackling toxic chemicals, since Congress is still dragging its feet. Read all about it at the Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow.

More Reasons to Walk the Beach in Winter...

People come to the beach in winter for different reasons. In the comments section on a past post on this subject, readers often mentioned peace and quiet. Beauty, of course, should be right up there at the top of the list. Today we are going to review physical reasons for coming to the beach in winter, ie. what people take away. Last week Sven and I spotted a couple picking something up on the beach. What do you think it was? Here are some options ..

When I was a child, we would search the seashore for pretty shells. I remember starting a shell collection after a visit to Rehobeth Beach, in Delaware. On Cape Cod, bay beaches are where to look for scallop shells. In Wellfleet, shells can still be found at Duck Harbor, but the ocean beaches only offer the broken clam now and then.

Some folks come for driftwood. They turn a nice piece into a lamp base, or create a mobile, or simply put a weathered branch on the mantelpiece as a reminder of summer. Others drag larger pieces home for firewood.

In the olden days, Wellfleetians would cart home buckets of seaweed to fertilize the vegetable garden. Salt straw/hay was also collected on the beach. (In Eva and Henry, local author Irene Paine explained how salt hay was fed to the animals once the regular kind ran out.)

On the beach, you meet the occasional person with a metal detector. Everyone dreams of finding buried treasure, but these folks take that dream a step further, acting on it. Sometimes metal-detection becomes a hobby, but rarely do people discover more than scrap metal or a few coins. Read about becoming a licensed beachcomber here.

What most people will look for on Wellfleet's ocean beaches, in 2012, are stones, , and this is what the couple above seemed to be doing. Stones can be beautiful. One woman we met two years ago was collecting pretty stones for her pre-school class. Shelly Daly, a regular blog reader, turns them into jewelry. Some people use them as garden decoration. Others put them in the bottom of fish tanks. From time to time our guests collect stones on the beach, only to forget them in the hurry of packing. Stones are a great way to remember summer in the dead of winter.

A blog reader named Lynn shared why she collects stones: "When we are on Cape every fall, I gather the stones that speak to me. Then, I have them to tuck into a coat pocket, or my handbag, and pile them in selected spots in my bathroom, so when I feel I am missing my spiritual home too much, I put them in the sink and see the colors come back to life in the water. It always restores me!"

What do you take home from a visit to the beach and why?

Seagull Conference on the Harbor: Before & After

Apparently there were more than just seagulls holding conferences in Wellfleet this week. News broke last night that six actors are forming a new theater troop, which will be called the Harbor Stage Company. Read all about it in this theater blog. The Harbor Stage Company plans three shows a season.

What do you folks think? Is there room in Wellfleet for two different theater options?

Dolphin Strandings Continue in Wellfleet

Those of you who live in the Boston area have probably heard about the numerous dolphin strandings on the Outer Cape over the past ten days. You may have even seen newscasts, showing Wellfleetians hard at work in an effort to save these marvelous sea creatures. My friend Tracy Plaut and her husband Swede volunteer for IFAW on a regular basis. The months of January and February bring the greatest need for this type of assistance. Volunteers make themselves available at a moment’s notice. They grab gear and head out, often in raw, inclement weather, for hours at a time. Last Thursday volunteers, along with our local harbormaster, were able to herd dolphins out of Wellfleet Harbor successfully. There have been so many strandings in our area of late that the IFAW trucks were parked in the Cove Corners parking lot when I drove by. No one knows why the marine mammals seem to get stuck in Cape Cod Bay. As the Boston Globe reports, the Outer Cape is one of the top three stranding locations IN THE WORLD. Often strandings take place at low tide. The animals are transported to the IFAW trailer for testing, treatment, and the occasional tracking device. Tracy headed up the trailer team last week when a particularly vigorous group of animals were brought in for testing. In her attempt to hold one down, Tracy bruised her ribs and side. She told me that a rather chubby dolphin was examined as well. When the team realized the dolphin was pregnant, they used ultra-sound equipment to peek at her babies. “It was so thrilling to see their flukes,” Tracy told me. Indeed! What an amazing experience.

What Makes Me Angry ...

Every so often I get really, really angry. If I stood in front of a mirror, steam would probably be coming out of my nostrils, and my face would have already turned purple. The signs above, at Ballston Beach in Truro, indicate danger. There are no signs to warn us of the toxic chemicals that have infiltrated our lives. We need to turn this situation around, but how?

I get angry when I read the umpteenth article on endocrine disruption and realize that life will go on as desired by the chemical industry with no change. Ignorant human beings will gain weight and develop diabetes, despite today’s news of a new study linking phthalates to childhood obesity. This morning also brought an ABC report on 300 chemicals detected in a nursery. (Express your approval of this type of investigation here.)

Yes, it’s true that enlightenment comes slowly ...

Recently there have been more articles on how to avoid toxic chemicals in food. Here's another. Food bloggers are big on the Internet, but, so far, they have not tackled toxins in food.

I only started studying these issues two and a half years ago, in my effort to prevent NStar from spraying Monsanto’s glyphosate, and four other nasty chemicals, under Cape Cod’s power lines to kill vegetation. One thing led to another and soon I realized Monsanto is an evil empire here on earth. The corporation has infiltrated our government and has been twisting arms to impose GMOs on Europe, for instance.

And, the USA? We’re already doomed unless someone does something fast. Monsanto has managed to bypass rigorous testing and sneak unlabeled GMOs into 80% of the food found on American grocery shelves. Last month NPR's Diane Rehm did a whole show on why GMOs should be labeled. Corn and HFCS (high-fructose corn syrup) remain the major offenders. Food Inc. explained how HFCS also makes us fat. It’s still possible to eat local and avoid GMOs, but for how long? Monsanto is buying up seed companies. Argh!!! (Read the latest on this dreadful corporation on the Organic Consumers Web site.)

Meanwhile, here on Cape Cod, NStar has not abandoned its plan to poison our sole-source aquifer with five toxic chemicals. One of them, glyphosate, has been shown to increase risk of birth defects in the unborn. The utility company will put their plan into action in the spring. If you are a pregnant woman on the Outer Cape, you do not want to be drinking unfiltered well water, since NStar already tested its spraying plan in certain areas. These toxic chemicals do not dissolve. They are not absorbed by the soil. In fact, they flow right through our sandbar-of-a-beautiful-tourist-destination into the aquifer. Activists proposed goats early on and NStar scoffed. Google uses goats at its headquarters in California. Why shouldn’t we have them here? Now Eastham has its own herd. Today’s New York Times reports goats are a great way to avoid herbicides, something we already knew, but, hey, it’s refreshing to see people are beginning to talk about it ...