The Wetland Wanderer

by Brenda Zollitsch

My son never passes up the chance to put on his exploring hat.  It doesn’t matter that it is a simple touristy purchase from several years ago when it was much too big.  From the moment it balanced on his eager little ears, it has been a passport to fun and what I call “learning without realizing we’re learning.”  Last month, that magic hat transported us to Cape Cod for one of the most richly rewarding wetland wanders ever.

My husband and I had honeymooned on the middle Cape and bringing our kids to the Cape was special.  My son Zachary just turned six and has a budding interest in how the world works.  My daughter Veronica is a precocious, inquisitive little two-year-old.  Finding activities that balance the interest and abilities of both ages is always exciting.  The Cape Cod Natural History Museum and John Wing Trail both surely fit that bill.

We arrived before the Museum opened.  Zachary donned his exploring hat and we headed off.  First, the trail heads through a small stretch of coastal pitch pine woodlands.  This short section opens into an impressive boardwalk across the salt marsh.  Both children loved walking along the imperfectly flat double boards.  For a two year old, it was like walking a fun tightrope, weaving here and there and giggling the whole way across.

As we walked, we talked about how salt marshes work – how the plants filter out pollutants, how the marsh is not solid ground, but instead spongy and springy and that’s why we walk across on boards.  We talked about the kinds of animals that live in salt marshes and how the marsh helps both protect the coastal areas from pollution coming off the land and the land from storm surge coming in from the sea.

Now you might question whether or not my six year old was interested in all this.  The answer is – absolutely.  If you ask him, he will tell you with great animation about the filtering, the sponginess, the storms and the runoff.  On the other hand, Veronica remembers the ladybug that landed on her hand.  And that’s just as it should be.

Next, we reached a forested upland where we were treated to buzzing insects, dragonflies, the smell of pines and intermittent spots of sun and shade.  My son used his new reading skills to examine the signs along the way that described the types of plants and birds that made the area their home.  This marsh was a salt marsh hay farm up until the early 1900’s.

Before that the Wampanoag used Wing’s Island as their summer “village.”

Zachary’s hat was certainly working that day, as we stumbled upon a fascinating “solar calendar” that looked like Stonehenge.  I’ve since learned that the calendar was built to provide a replica of those used by the Cape’s earliest inhabitants (Weintraub, 2006).  It did not tell the specific time of day or months, but rather marked the position of the sun on equinoxes and solstices.  Both my children enjoyed pretending to determine the season by standing in the middle and looking at the shadows cast by the surrounding rocks.  Clearly the salt marshes have been valuable to their human inhabitants for a very long time.

The final portion of the walk led us down through a salt marsh swale to the barrier beach.  Part of the area was cordoned off by an orange line with signs indicating that the area was closed off to protect nesting piping plovers.  Zachary could see how conservationists were protecting the endangered little birds.

As we returned from our walk the museum opened. Of special interest to my son was their new exhibit on the sharks of Cape Cod, where Zachary learned about the increase in Great White and Basking Shark sightings off of Cape Cod, and even got to see on a map a Great White that was tagged off Cape Cod and swam to Bermuda and back.  They both loved the touch tanks and my daughter fell in love with a turtle she saw there.  They also saw the inside of a bee colony in action, a live osprey cam, and a display of every type of bird that lives on the Cape.  The highlight, however, was the chance to enter a shark cage (shown here).  Hat or no hat, the excitement of pretending to be a diver submerged with Great Whites topped it all.  Even the salt marsh.  But we’ll forgive him that.  My heart is still wandering around that amazing marsh and rejoicing in the smells of early summer among marsh grasses.

To learn more about the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History and the Wing Trail, click here.  For more information on walking the salt marshes of Cape Cod, check out: Walking the Cape and Islands by David Weintraub (2006) published by Menasha Ridge Press.    For a history of salt marsh hay farming, I recommend the summary and links here.