Storyscape Journal : The Literary Journal of Champions

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Issue 3, March 2009
Truth | previous next story |

The First Encounter
Carla Porch

As a great fish swims along
the two banks of a river,
in the same way, [allow your] Spirit
to move along [these] two dwellings;
this waking world and
the land of sleep and dreams.
Brihadaranyaka, The Upanishads

     We rushed across the parking lot and leaned the bikes against the railing at First Encounter Beach. We had made it in time—the sun had not yet set. It was still complete and rested just above the point where turquoise, red, and orange sky met shadowy bay. No clouds were in sight. The evening air idled, holding onto its late afternoon warmth—too balmy to wear the sweatshirts tied to our waists. My husband, daughter, and I stood transfixed watching the sun descend. Where we live in Brooklyn sunsets are blocked by rows of brownstones, which, from any vantage point, obstruct our view of the west. It would be some time before we would get a chance to see another sunset like this. What a send-off!
     Dusk quickly approached. We got back on the bikes in reluctant silence, knowing we should return to the rental cottage before dark since the bikes only had reflectors, and the roads back had no shoulders. Before pedaling off, we turned around to give the setting sun a final look when a glint from the diminishing light backlit a brass plaque on the beach close to where we stood straddling the bikes. My daughter read the inscription aloud. It stated that the Mayflower Company had trespassed on the Nauset people’s land, a surprising discovery as this was only the acknowledgement of the Native American dispossession we had ever seen anywhere on Cape Cod. How disconcerting—we had rented the same cottage by this beach for the past several summers and had never noticed the plaque. Had it been placed here during the previous year? No, we saw it had been put here in 2001—a year we hadn’t come to the Cape.
     I glanced over to my husband and saw his face soften. He is from Peru and Native American on his mother’s side, a fact he had only acknowledged in the last ten years. Prior to then he had felt compelled to exist in the amorphous identity of a half-breed mestizo. Though more aboriginal in appearance, he had identified closely with being white. He looked back at me and said in his half-serious, half-joking manner, “Finally, some of your people want to set history straight.” I vowed to return at sunrise and take a shot of this commemoration. Since the plaque faced directly east, the sun would shine on it at a low angle then and illuminate the raised letters with just the right amount of light, avoiding an overexposure. And perhaps, it would provide a poignant turning point to this year’s collection of rather standard beach vacation photographs.

     At dawn on the following day, I took off for First Encounter Beach alone. Plumes from the swaying marsh grasses ahead shimmered with early morning light, mesmerizing me. I revived from my momentary revelry to realize I might have already missed sunrise. My hands clutched the brakes in time for the bicycle to make a smooth, sharp right onto Samoset Road. With less than a mile to go, I pedaled fast, so fast that my French braid thumped my back like a riding crop and the both halves of my long wraparound skirt flapped behind me like a power sail. At the end of Samoset Road, I slowed down to pass through the unmanned attendant’s gate that led into First Encounter Beach. The skirt halves swooped under my backside and over my thighs, and remained in place as I bee-lined across the empty parking lot. The beach was silent except for the screech of my hand brakes.
     The rising sun had not yet reached the embossed letters. Its light still loomed on the far side of the sand dunes at the end of the parking lot. I knew that if I took a shot then, it would come out underexposed. The anticipated effect I wanted would not arrive for a few minutes, so I dismounted and parked the bike at the edge of the pavement, and walked a few feet onto the beach to wait. Dawn’s clarity prevailed.
     At first glance, the bay appeared at a standstill, and then my eyes could make out rippling, minuscule waves rolling in. Sandpipers, sea kites, and gulls waded in swirl-shaped tidal pools at water’s edge. Two electric blue dragonflies the size of a hummingbird flew in concentric circles above my head. There were no human footprints on the beach, aside from those that stretched out behind me. I closed my eyes and heard the soft, white noise from the returning tide flowing into the bay. A gull’s squawk sharpened the stillness. Wisps released from my braid caressed the sides of my face. A warm, gentle breeze surrounded my body and held me standstill. I let myself linger with this bittersweet feeling of oneness, knowing I would not have it again until next summer.
     An engine roared behind me, then shut off. Doors released and slammed. I walked back to the now sun-gilded inscription and quickly pulled out the Leica from my backpack. After taking a few close-up shots, I adjusted the zoom lens to wide angle. Through the viewfinder, I saw radiance spreading across the bay above the plaque: contrasts now heightened between sky, sea, and beach. Golden sandbars striped the blue water. I waited for the couple from the SUV to walk out of camera range before I took a shot of the bay. The tide was rolling in, and it would be high enough in an hour or so to swim laps spanning from one end of First Encounter to the other. I resumed taking several more exposures.

Near this site the Nauset Tribe of the Wampanoag Nation
seeking to protect themselves and their culture had their First Encounter,
December 8, 1620, with Myles Standish, John Carver, William Bradford,
Edward Winslow, John Tilley, Edward Tilley, John Howland, Richard Warren,
Stephen Hopkins, Edward Dotey, John Allerton, Thomas English, Master Mate Clark,
Master Gunner Copin and three sailors of the Mayflower Company.
(This text is inscribed on a bronze plaque at First Encounter Beach in Eastham Massachusetts)

How did the Mayflower navigate through Cape Cod Bay without getting stuck in the sandbars that stretch out far from shore during a low tide? Tides are extreme here, and even more so during a full moon, when the beach appears to extend to the opposite shore across the bay with no water in sight. Whenever the tide is this low, I imagine it possible to walk the fifty miles directly north from First Encounter to Plymouth on the bottom of the bay. If the tide had been low when the Puritans arrived here they would have trudged ashore on the mucky bay floor, laden with their heavy woolen outerwear, their strides clumsy, particularly after being confined to the Mayflower for sixty-six days crossing the Atlantic. Had the Nausets peered through scrubby pines and tall beach grass that still grow along the bluffs and dunes as the Mayflower perused the coast? Or were they waiting on the beach when Miles Standish and the rest went ashore? And how foul these Englishmen must have smelled to the awaiting Nausets!

Less than a quarter of a mile out into the bay, a shipwreck sits upright in the bottom of the bay with only its wooden hull intact. According to the owner of our rental cottage, it has been there for about a hundred years, though it seems ready to sail from First Encounter Beach’s shallow cove. With each summer that we return, the relic grows smaller. Submersion in water preserves it, but at low tide, sun exposure causes the remaining structure to shrink—a ruin in constant preservation and decay: a visual conundrum. Once, at extreme low tide, I walked to it. As I was about to touch its encrusted moss and barnacle side, terror overtook me. Before I could overcome my fear, I turned and ran back to shore smashing mollusk beds with my bare feet.

In the chapter called ‘The Blue of Distance’ in her collection of essays, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit describes how some white settlers, who had been captured by native people in the New World, remained with their Native American captors out of choice, particularly those who were taken as children, then adopted by the tribe as one of their own. In the recorded case of the former Puritan Eunice Williams, whose family had settled on Iroquois land in western Massachusetts, the tribe abducted her along with her older brother, Stephen. She was seven at the time. Stephen returned to their birth family after many years with the Iroquois family. Eunice did not. Her new family could not bear to give her up because she had replaced one of their deceased children. Even so, it was Eunice who chose to remain with the Iroquois. Solnit writes, “There is something obdurate, obsessive, inflexible about them (the Puritans), as hard and angular as conquistador’s armor, as dreary as Puritan theology. The Iroquois were kinder to children, and perhaps the thing hardest for whites to accept or, often even to imagine is that some captives preferred native culture.” Her Puritan family deemed Eunice a tragic loss, but Solnit suggests otherwise. Eunice was no longer a captive because “she had become someone else...” and was no longer waiting to return home since she had found herself in this new identity.

Sunrays began to heat my back. It was time to take one last shot of the plaque and avoid an overexposure. I looked through the viewfinder and focused, and then a voice called out to me, “Go to the dune to your right.” I looked up from the viewfinder and saw a tall, willowy man pass in front of me a few feet away. He possessed androgynous features, like a Renaissance angel portrayed by Botticelli. His golden hair and striking blue eyes intensified his slight presence. A calico Australian Border collie accompanying him ran over and sniffed my feet. Both man and dog projected an ethereal quality. Were these two real? “Where?” I responded. Without stopping, he pointed his finger towards the sand dune, and then he and the dog vanished into the sea grass on my left. I climbed the narrow footpath to the top of the crest of the dune. Almost hidden from view was another plaque, bolted to a granite boulder on the crest, and overlaid with a sea-salt patina. It commemorated the same event, but differently. In this monument, the native peoples are not portrayed as victims of their forthcoming doom. I knew the inscription might be difficult to read in a photograph since the luster on the lettering had dissolved, but I took a shot of it anyway.

ON THIS SPOT
HOSTILE INDIANS HAD THEIR
FIRST ENCOUNTER
DECEMBER 8, 1620
WITH
Myles Standish, John Carver, William Bradford,
Edward Winslow, John Tilley, Edward Tilley, John Howland, Richard Warren, Stephen Hopkins,
Edward Dotey, John Allerton, Thomas English, Master Mate Clark, Master Gunner Copin
and three sailors of the Mayflower Company.
PROVINCETOWN TERCENTARY COMMISSION
1620 1920

I had the film processed and printed upon returning home. Most of the roll was what I expected. The photograph recording the gilded inscription of the plaque on the beach came out perfect: the lettering sharply glistened. The inscription on the hidden plaque at top of the dune, though correctly exposed, was mostly indecipherable. But I had also photographed something unexpected: an image of a group of tall, vertical shadows rising from the bottom of the photograph and extending horizontally across the beach. The photograph gave the haunting illusion that a band of tall Nauset sentinels had stood with me in looking out at Cape Cod Bay as the tide returned to First Encounter Beach that morning.

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Issue 3, March 2009 Truth \| previous next story \|	The First Encounter Carla Porch As a great fish swims along the two banks of a river, in the same way, [allow your] Spirit to move along [these] two dwellings; this waking world and the land of sleep and dreams. Brihadaranyaka, The Upanishads We rushed across the parking lot and leaned the bikes against the railing at First Encounter Beach. We had made it in time—the sun had not yet set. It was still complete and rested just above the point where turquoise, red, and orange sky met shadowy bay. No clouds were in sight. The evening air idled, holding onto its late afternoon warmth—too balmy to wear the sweatshirts tied to our waists. My husband, daughter, and I stood transfixed watching the sun descend. Where we live in Brooklyn sunsets are blocked by rows of brownstones, which, from any vantage point, obstruct our view of the west. It would be some time before we would get a chance to see another sunset like this. What a send-off! Dusk quickly approached. We got back on the bikes in reluctant silence, knowing we should return to the rental cottage before dark since the bikes only had reflectors, and the roads back had no shoulders. Before pedaling off, we turned around to give the setting sun a final look when a glint from the diminishing light backlit a brass plaque on the beach close to where we stood straddling the bikes. My daughter read the inscription aloud. It stated that the Mayflower Company had trespassed on the Nauset people’s land, a surprising discovery as this was only the acknowledgement of the Native American dispossession we had ever seen anywhere on Cape Cod. How disconcerting—we had rented the same cottage by this beach for the past several summers and had never noticed the plaque. Had it been placed here during the previous year? No, we saw it had been put here in 2001—a year we hadn’t come to the Cape. I glanced over to my husband and saw his face soften. He is from Peru and Native American on his mother’s side, a fact he had only acknowledged in the last ten years. Prior to then he had felt compelled to exist in the amorphous identity of a half-breed mestizo. Though more aboriginal in appearance, he had identified closely with being white. He looked back at me and said in his half-serious, half-joking manner, “Finally, some of your people want to set history straight.” I vowed to return at sunrise and take a shot of this commemoration. Since the plaque faced directly east, the sun would shine on it at a low angle then and illuminate the raised letters with just the right amount of light, avoiding an overexposure. And perhaps, it would provide a poignant turning point to this year’s collection of rather standard beach vacation photographs. At dawn on the following day, I took off for First Encounter Beach alone. Plumes from the swaying marsh grasses ahead shimmered with early morning light, mesmerizing me. I revived from my momentary revelry to realize I might have already missed sunrise. My hands clutched the brakes in time for the bicycle to make a smooth, sharp right onto Samoset Road. With less than a mile to go, I pedaled fast, so fast that my French braid thumped my back like a riding crop and the both halves of my long wraparound skirt flapped behind me like a power sail. At the end of Samoset Road, I slowed down to pass through the unmanned attendant’s gate that led into First Encounter Beach. The skirt halves swooped under my backside and over my thighs, and remained in place as I bee-lined across the empty parking lot. The beach was silent except for the screech of my hand brakes. The rising sun had not yet reached the embossed letters. Its light still loomed on the far side of the sand dunes at the end of the parking lot. I knew that if I took a shot then, it would come out underexposed. The anticipated effect I wanted would not arrive for a few minutes, so I dismounted and parked the bike at the edge of the pavement, and walked a few feet onto the beach to wait. Dawn’s clarity prevailed. At first glance, the bay appeared at a standstill, and then my eyes could make out rippling, minuscule waves rolling in. Sandpipers, sea kites, and gulls waded in swirl-shaped tidal pools at water’s edge. Two electric blue dragonflies the size of a hummingbird flew in concentric circles above my head. There were no human footprints on the beach, aside from those that stretched out behind me. I closed my eyes and heard the soft, white noise from the returning tide flowing into the bay. A gull’s squawk sharpened the stillness. Wisps released from my braid caressed the sides of my face. A warm, gentle breeze surrounded my body and held me standstill. I let myself linger with this bittersweet feeling of oneness, knowing I would not have it again until next summer. An engine roared behind me, then shut off. Doors released and slammed. I walked back to the now sun-gilded inscription and quickly pulled out the Leica from my backpack. After taking a few close-up shots, I adjusted the zoom lens to wide angle. Through the viewfinder, I saw radiance spreading across the bay above the plaque: contrasts now heightened between sky, sea, and beach. Golden sandbars striped the blue water. I waited for the couple from the SUV to walk out of camera range before I took a shot of the bay. The tide was rolling in, and it would be high enough in an hour or so to swim laps spanning from one end of First Encounter to the other. I resumed taking several more exposures. Near this site the Nauset Tribe of the Wampanoag Nation seeking to protect themselves and their culture had their First Encounter, December 8, 1620, with Myles Standish, John Carver, William Bradford, Edward Winslow, John Tilley, Edward Tilley, John Howland, Richard Warren, Stephen Hopkins, Edward Dotey, John Allerton, Thomas English, Master Mate Clark, Master Gunner Copin and three sailors of the Mayflower Company. (This text is inscribed on a bronze plaque at First Encounter Beach in Eastham Massachusetts) How did the Mayflower navigate through Cape Cod Bay without getting stuck in the sandbars that stretch out far from shore during a low tide? Tides are extreme here, and even more so during a full moon, when the beach appears to extend to the opposite shore across the bay with no water in sight. Whenever the tide is this low, I imagine it possible to walk the fifty miles directly north from First Encounter to Plymouth on the bottom of the bay. If the tide had been low when the Puritans arrived here they would have trudged ashore on the mucky bay floor, laden with their heavy woolen outerwear, their strides clumsy, particularly after being confined to the Mayflower for sixty-six days crossing the Atlantic. Had the Nausets peered through scrubby pines and tall beach grass that still grow along the bluffs and dunes as the Mayflower perused the coast? Or were they waiting on the beach when Miles Standish and the rest went ashore? And how foul these Englishmen must have smelled to the awaiting Nausets! Less than a quarter of a mile out into the bay, a shipwreck sits upright in the bottom of the bay with only its wooden hull intact. According to the owner of our rental cottage, it has been there for about a hundred years, though it seems ready to sail from First Encounter Beach’s shallow cove. With each summer that we return, the relic grows smaller. Submersion in water preserves it, but at low tide, sun exposure causes the remaining structure to shrink—a ruin in constant preservation and decay: a visual conundrum. Once, at extreme low tide, I walked to it. As I was about to touch its encrusted moss and barnacle side, terror overtook me. Before I could overcome my fear, I turned and ran back to shore smashing mollusk beds with my bare feet. In the chapter called ‘The Blue of Distance’ in her collection of essays, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit describes how some white settlers, who had been captured by native people in the New World, remained with their Native American captors out of choice, particularly those who were taken as children, then adopted by the tribe as one of their own. In the recorded case of the former Puritan Eunice Williams, whose family had settled on Iroquois land in western Massachusetts, the tribe abducted her along with her older brother, Stephen. She was seven at the time. Stephen returned to their birth family after many years with the Iroquois family. Eunice did not. Her new family could not bear to give her up because she had replaced one of their deceased children. Even so, it was Eunice who chose to remain with the Iroquois. Solnit writes, “There is something obdurate, obsessive, inflexible about them (the Puritans), as hard and angular as conquistador’s armor, as dreary as Puritan theology. The Iroquois were kinder to children, and perhaps the thing hardest for whites to accept or, often even to imagine is that some captives preferred native culture.” Her Puritan family deemed Eunice a tragic loss, but Solnit suggests otherwise. Eunice was no longer a captive because “she had become someone else...” and was no longer waiting to return home since she had found herself in this new identity. Sunrays began to heat my back. It was time to take one last shot of the plaque and avoid an overexposure. I looked through the viewfinder and focused, and then a voice called out to me, “Go to the dune to your right.” I looked up from the viewfinder and saw a tall, willowy man pass in front of me a few feet away. He possessed androgynous features, like a Renaissance angel portrayed by Botticelli. His golden hair and striking blue eyes intensified his slight presence. A calico Australian Border collie accompanying him ran over and sniffed my feet. Both man and dog projected an ethereal quality. Were these two real? “Where?” I responded. Without stopping, he pointed his finger towards the sand dune, and then he and the dog vanished into the sea grass on my left. I climbed the narrow footpath to the top of the crest of the dune. Almost hidden from view was another plaque, bolted to a granite boulder on the crest, and overlaid with a sea-salt patina. It commemorated the same event, but differently. In this monument, the native peoples are not portrayed as victims of their forthcoming doom. I knew the inscription might be difficult to read in a photograph since the luster on the lettering had dissolved, but I took a shot of it anyway. ON THIS SPOT HOSTILE INDIANS HAD THEIR FIRST ENCOUNTER DECEMBER 8, 1620 WITH Myles Standish, John Carver, William Bradford, Edward Winslow, John Tilley, Edward Tilley, John Howland, Richard Warren, Stephen Hopkins, Edward Dotey, John Allerton, Thomas English, Master Mate Clark, Master Gunner Copin and three sailors of the Mayflower Company. PROVINCETOWN TERCENTARY COMMISSION 1620 1920 ** I had the film processed and printed upon returning home. Most of the roll was what I expected. The photograph recording the gilded inscription of the plaque on the beach came out perfect: the lettering sharply glistened. The inscription on the hidden plaque at top of the dune, though correctly exposed, was mostly indecipherable. But I had also photographed something unexpected: an image of a group of tall, vertical shadows rising from the bottom of the photograph and extending horizontally across the beach. The photograph gave the haunting illusion that a band of tall Nauset sentinels had stood with me in looking out at Cape Cod Bay as the tide returned to First Encounter Beach that morning.
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