Dwelling in the Dunes: Traditional Use of the Dune Shacks
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Dwelling in the Dunes: Traditional Use of the Dune Shacks of the Peaked Hill Bars Historic District, Cape Cod Robert J. Wolfe Final Report for the Research Project, “Traditional Cultural Significance of the Dune Shacks Historic District, Cape Cod National Seashore” (No. P4506040200), Supported by the National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior August 2005 Cover Picture: Theo Cozzi Poulin, Kathie Joseph Meads, Maureen Joseph Hurst, and Susan Leonard at the Tasha Shack in the Peaked Hill Bars Historic District, Cape Cod National Seashore, August, 2004. Picture by Robert J. Wolfe. Abstract: Dwelling in the Dunes This ethnographic report provides a picture of the traditions and cultural patterns of the dune dwellers living in shacks in the Peaked Hill Bars Historic District, Cape Cod National Seashore, Massachusetts. The report describes the seasonal settlement of dune dwellers, and documents their traditional cultural practices, beliefs, customs, and histories that are linked to the shacks and the historic district. Information for the report primarily derives from direct observations on the lower cape and formal interviews with 47 shack residents during August and September, 2004. The research was supported by the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior (“Traditional Cultural Significance of the Dune Shacks Historic District, Cape Cod National Seashore,” No. P4506040200). The report describes a “dune shack society” comprised of shack users, with a core of about 250 shack residents with connections to perhaps another 1,100 to 1,700 shack users. The group traces its history about one hundred years. Several shacks have housed four-generations of family members. In 2004, there were nineteen occupied shacks, most located on barrier dunes of what is locally called “the Backshore” of Provincetown. Shacks are small, weathered, and rustic looking, built on skids or pilings allowing for occasional repositioning on unstable dunes. Minimal infrastructure typified the “fragile house type,” purposively designed to accommodate a fluid and relatively unspoiled natural environment. Shacks survive harsh conditions through unending maintenance and small adjustments by shack residents, including low-tech methods of sand management using simple sand fences and dune plants. Long-term members of dune shack society relate a shared identity and history that includes “surfmen” and fishers with Portuguese and Yankee roots on the lower cape, as well as writers and artists from Provincetown’s fine arts colony dating since the late 19th century. Socially, the group’s core is organized as a set of extended families linked to particular shacks with networks of close friends who stay as invited guests and provide sources of labor alongside family members. Families and individuals on occasion have organized into associations and nonprofit groups for collective action to preserve the dunes, the shacks, and their traditions. Cultural ideals value privacy, autonomy, and solitude, resulting in a small, personal, but loose-knit seasonal settlement. At least three identifiable traditions find expression in the cultural patterns of contemporary dune dwellers. First, some dune uses are identified with “Old Provincetown,” Backshore traditions including salvaging, foraging, training children, and retreating from small-town pressures. Accordingly, the dune shacks come to represent for the town iconic symbols of certain traditions perceived as threatened by outside forces. Second, the expressive traditions of the fine arts colony extend into the dunes, with shacks offering centers for writing, art, and other creative expression. Third, concepts of environmentalism associated with Thoreau and Beston find expression in the settlement as demonstrations of special relationships with Nature. The report provides detailed descriptions of dune shack customs and beliefs, illustrated with extensive quotes from dune dwellers. The report describes cultural patterns such as land use, shack naming conventions, seasonal residencies, privacy and solitude, mutual assistance, shack transference, ceremonies, among others. Dynamic aspects are described, including maturation cycles of families related to shack use, the repositioning of shacks in response to storms and sand, and the transmission of culture through extended family lines and new entrants to the society. Table of Contents: Dwelling in the Dunes Chapter 1. People Living on an Edge...............................................................................................1 Chapter 2. The Roots of Tradition................................................................................................. 15 Chapter 3. Dune Shack Society..................................................................................................... 43 Dwelling in the Dunes: Images, 2004 ............................................................................................71 Chapter 4. Social Formation.......................................................................................................... 83 Chapter 5. Customary Practices ...................................................................................................101 Chapter 6. Cultural Patterns in the Landscape .............................................................................127 Chapter 7. Cultural Traditions I: The Edge of Provincetown.......................................................159 Chapter 8. Cultural Traditions II: The Edge of America’s Art Colony........................................179 Chapter 9. Cultural Traditions III: The Edge of Nature and Society............................................201 Chapter 10. Programmed Residences...........................................................................................215 Chapter 11. Shack Maintenance and Protection...........................................................................225 Chapter 12. Social Challenges......................................................................................................245 Chapter 13. References.................................................................................................................255 Chapter 1. People Living on an Edge This report is about people living on an edge, an unstable edge of sand arcing into the North Atlantic at the tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. They are dune dwellers, self-reliant mavericks choosing to live seasonally in fragile shacks perched on a ridge of barrier dunes above the sea. Here in winter, the empty shacks are exposed to battering northeast storms from the open ocean. From spring through fall when the shacks are used, they are bathed with reflected light from unrestricted horizons. The shacks float on what some dune dwellers call a “liquid earth,” dunes that move, an unstable landscape of sand, wet berry bogs, thorny heaths, and stunted patches of pitch pine and oak. For generations the special qualities at the cape’s farthest end have drawn fishers, artists, writers, and authentic eccentrics, forming into distinctive communities and establishing roots. It’s a wondrous edge, the dune dwellers assert, offering solitude, new vistas, and creative energy. It’s why they’ve lived there in simple shacks for generations, to be intimately connected to it, purposively exposed on the outer edge of the continent. This report is ethnography, an anthropological picture of the traditions and cultures of the dune dwellers on the outside edge of the tip of Cape Cod. My goal in the report is to describe the seasonal settlement of the dune dwellers, to document their traditional cultural practices, beliefs, customs, and histories that are linked to the shacks and dunes. Over the years, the cape’s end has drawn other peoples as well, such as surf fishers, dune buggy enthusiasts, and hoards of summer tourists. But this report does not focus on them. It focuses on long-term residents of the lower cape who have lived on the dunes in shacks. To understand the traditional culture of the dunes, I sought out experts, those people with a continuity of memory and direct experience connected to the shacks, dune dwellers who knew their own histories and practices. There have never been many dune shacks. In 2004, the year of this study, they numbered just eighteen or nineteen shacks, depending on how you counted them. Nor have there been many dune dwellers. At present, about 250 people formed a core, with connections to perhaps another 1,100 to 1,700 users. The barrier dunes with shacks were not extensive either, only about three miles of shoreline, a viewshed of about 1,500 acres. But I discovered a wealth of cultural practices connected to this small area. And the people living on the dunes in shacks were eager to share them with me. On the Edge of a Sandy Hook Cape Cod is a long peninsula commonly described as a flexed arm stuck out into the sea, pointing northward. It’s the remnant from the last great ice age, according to geologists. The Chapter 1. People Living on an Edge 1 Wisconsin ice sheet shoved into the North Atlantic, riding on a deep moraine of rocky debris scoured from the continent. When the ice sheet retreated about 15,000 years ago, it left its rocky moorings, the terminal moraine, protruding into the ocean, a footing for what was to become the cape. Over the years woodlands covered the cape with pitch pine, oak, bearberry, and other plants. It became a homeland for Native Americans at least 3,000 years ago. When the Pilgrims arrived in the New World in 1620, they