One day last month, before the rains fell again, I took a walk in South Wellfleet along the ocean bluffs across a flat and curiously barren shelf of land that runs between Marconi Beach and the historic Marconi Site to the north. This tableland is in the northern part of what is geologically known as the "Plains of Eastham."
Thoreau, when he walked across it in 1849, described this area as "an apparently boundless plain, without a tree or fence." At that time most of the Cape was a treeless landscape, but this particular area has long been recognized by Cape Codders as unusually barren. For reasons that are not clear, this stretch of the Outer Cape is covered with inland dunes, thick layers of sand overlaying the glacial deposits and extending over a thousand feet inland from the beach.
The local name for it was "Goody Hallett's Meadow," a reference to the quasi-historic 18th century "Witch of Eastham." Charged with various occult crimes, Goody was exiled by the good people of Eastham to this barren stretch of ground, which she cursed, and where, it is said, she lured unwary sailors to their death or, in some cases, fates worse than death.
Whatever the cause, long after most of the Cape has reforested itself, this fringe of tableland remains curiously bare and stark in appearance. This time of the year it is a waste of darkened humps of poverty grass, withered gray seaside goldenrod with blown cottony seed heads, and the whitened drooping sculptures of dusty miller that stand like miniature melting ghosts.
At one point I came upon what appeared to be a piece of green fabric emerging out of the top of the dune. The fabric was quite rotten, and tore easily as I tried to extricate it, but one swatch I pulled free was unmistakably the right front section of an army fatigue jacket. There were still four metal buttons, heavily rusted, down the front, and another button held shut a flap pocket. Above the pocket, on a sewn white canvas strip, were the faint, but legible block letters: "SOUSA."
This unexpected artifact reminded me of another aspect of this place's history, not as old as Goody Hallett's legend, or even the Marconi site, but one that had more of an effect on the local populace than either. During World War II, this featureless plain was part of Camp Wellfleet, an anti-aircraft army base. Sousa is a common local name at this end of the Cape, and most likely this jacket belonged to one of the dozens, perhaps hundreds of local boys who spent all or part of the war here. Now, some seventy years later, nearly all of the visible signs of Camp Wellfleet - the watch towers, bunkers, gun emplacements, helipads, and barbed wire fences - have vanished.
I find it curious that, while the historic Marconi site and its remaining artifacts have been carefully preserved and labeled, there is nothing to point the casual visitor to the more recent and less benign uses to which this place was once put. One needs a certain knowledge of local history and a willingness to weave the past out of such tattered threads: a patch of stained fabric, some corroded buttons, a faded name strip. But they stand for a life lived here, or, perhaps, one put on hold, depending on how its owner viewed war and his part in it. As a child of luck and timing, I have no personal knowledge of war, but like this anonymous soldier, I, too, have stood in desert places, waiting for something to jump-start my life again.
