Alexandersmap

    Blog

    • Fences and Forests

      “At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only – when fences shall be multiplied, and man-traps and other engines invented to confine men to the PUBLIC road, and walking over the surface of God’s earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman’s grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities, then, before the evil days come.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walking

      When I moved into the house I’m living in twenty years ago, when this cul de sac was just being built, I watched a dozen deer run through the woods and diagonally through the backyard out to the front where the driveway is and then off to wherever they roamed from there.  A few years after that I became annoyed with one of my neighbors central vacuum system which didn’t (and still doesn’t) have any form of muffler on it.  I put up a six foot privacy fence on that side of the house to block out the noise a bit.  Fences make good neighbors, they say.

      A few years after that we got a very energetic one year old black lab and put him on a run, which was a cable strung tightly between two trees in the backyard with his chain hanging down, giving him some freedom of movement but not enough.  Eventually we fenced in the backyard entirely, and he had room to roam without running away.  Well, we thought so at the time.  Snow pack and exceptional climbing skills proved the fence wasn’t always as high as it needed to be.

      Then came the pool, and it justified the investment in the fence.  And that fence continues to serve us well, in theory keeping the young neighborhood kids out of the pool while being compliant with the town’s codes which require a fenced-in pool.  With a pool you have liability.  Lawyers love pools. Insurance companies love fences.

      The forest remains timeless.  It’s just on the other side of that fence, and it’s largely as it was twenty years ago, and twenty years before that.  It continues to invite itself back into the yard.  After all the backyard was once part of the forest and perhaps one day it will be again.  I see the deer sometimes just on the other side of the fence.  But they don’t run through the yard anymore.

      Thoreau would find his walking to be very different than it was when he wrote those words.  Aside from conservation land and State Parks like Walden the landscape is completely different than it was for him.  Roads are paved, land is subdivided, fences are put up to screen annoying neighbors or to protect pool owners from wandering toddlers.  Thoreau might say that the evil days have indeed come.  And looking at the building boom going on seemingly everywhere I can’t help but think that myself.  Houses and residential communities popping up everywhere.  Roads getting more and more congested.  Mixed-use development projects all the rage.

      I read a book recently that described the frustration that a family had at the development of Bedford, New Hampshire back in the 1960’s.  I know the stretch of road they described as it is today, but never knew it as the quiet country road portrayed in the book.  They ended up moving further north into Maine.  And maybe moving further away is the answer.  Or maybe it starts with taking care of your own backyard before it’s too late.  Conservation and preservation, zoning restrictions, political will and public demand are the formula for open space.  Developers rule most town halls nowadays.  When people are indifferent to the land around them the void gets filled by people who build 55 plus housing developments.  This isn’t developer bashing – developers do a lot of great things and I’ve directly benefited from development.  It’s more a call to all of us to demand more for the environment we’re creating for ourselves and future generations.  A little preservation goes a long way.

    • Santa Maria

      While having a lunch in Newburyport I had the opportunity to check out a replica of the Santa Maria docked for a short stay in town.  The original famously sailed for America in 1492 with Christopher Columbus.  This one sailed to America for a 225th anniversary tour this spring.  There are plenty of differences between the original and the replica, starting with the additions of steel, fiberglass and electronics.  But the dimensions are accurate, and you got a good sense for what the sailors on board were dealing with.

      A few observations from walking around onboard.  First, a 58 foot square-rigged sailing vessel seemed too small for the 45 members of the crew.  Cramped quarters, frequent exposure to the elements, sleeping on wool rolls on a hard, sloped deck, and eating sponge cake washed down with red wine was not a recipe for optimal living.  Throw in hygiene issues, not the least of which was serious body odor, and health concerns ranging from scurvy to lice and it was clearly not a place I would have opted for.

      The Santa Maria, called a Nau in Spain but known as a Carrack in the rest of the world, was a three masted, square-rigged ship weighing between 80 and 150 tons, which stood high about the breaking waves.  The ship’s large hold made it attractive for someone like Christopher Columbus, who made the Santa Maria his flagship.  The raised quarterdeck allowed the captain and midshipmen to command the ship with good sight lines fore and aft.  Striking to me was just how much of a pitch the deck had.  Good for quickly shedding sea water from heavy wave action or rainwater, but standing on it in rough weather must have been tricky.

      The original Santa Maria didn’t survive the trip to America and back, running aground when Columbus and the captain both slept while a cabin boy steered the ship onto a sandbar.  Steering on the Santa Maria was done with a whipstaff, which was a vertical pole connected to the tiller.  The limitation with a whipstaff was that you could only adjust a maximum of about 15 degrees in either direction because a pole stuck through the quarterdeck to the tiller just didn’t allow for more range.  Ships wheels wouldn’t become standard on sailing ships for another two hundred years.  So the cabin boy who was steering wasn’t exactly set up for success.  Even though the ship never made it back to Spain, it remains one of the most familiar ship names in America (Show me a kid who doesn’t know Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria!).  I do hope this one has a longer lifespan and none of the navigational issues of its namesake.

      Columbus has lost his luster as a heroic figure, but there’s no doubting the courage of the crew for sailing on a ship this small, with two even smaller ships, to explore the unknown.  I think that’s why there’s still such a fascination with the three ships, and this one in particular.

    • Life in the Weeds

      Gardening is 80% maintenance and 20% appreciation for what you’ve accomplished.  That ratio is likely way off the mark.  It could be closer to 99% maintenance.  This morning I was weeding the garden in dress clothes, using the time before I went to a birthday party to weed one of the beds.  Such is the mind of a gardener that I thought to do this in dress clothes instead of tackling it before I showered and put on my Sunday best.  I managed to keep most of the dirt off anyway.

      Weeds are what you think they are.  Most plants that naturally grow in your yard are natives that thrive in that environment, while others are aggressive invaders that, well, thrive in that environment.  I didn’t invite the dandelions, clover, chickweed, maple seedlings and crabgrass to the party.  But Leopard Plant Ligularia, Black Eyed Susan and the most aggressive of all, Morning Glory were once planted with eager anticipation for the show they’d put on in the garden.  And the show is nice, but the seeds cast about in the wind growing everywhere?  Not so nice.

      Make no mistake, I don’t mind weeding.  In fact I’m quite fond of it.  Time weeding is “me time” (nobody else is volunteering) when I can think about anything or nothing at all.  And it’s a part of the deal.  You want a garden?  Get down on your hands and knees and bow to the clover god.  And when you’re done with clover there are dozens of Leopard Plant babies popping up all over the place.

      Chemical sprays can kill weeds pretty quickly, especially in the heat of summer, but I try to use them in moderation.  It’s one thing to spray the brick walk to knock down the weeds popping up in between.  It’s another thing altogether to spray in an active garden.  No, this is a task best accomplished with a good pair of grippy gloves and a comfortable pad to kneel on.  And that’s where you’ll find me a few times each week, busily filling a galvanized steel bucket with weeds.  May it go on forever.

    • The Merrimack River Frontier

      Yesterday I dove deep into the Cape Cod section of John Seller’s Mapp of New England.  Today I’m looking at another fascinating section – the border between “civilization” and the “wilderness’.  I’ve written before about place names like World’s End Pond in Salem, New Hampshire.  Nothing hammers that home like seeing a map from 1675 showing the Merrimack River towns of Haverhill (“Haveril“), Billerica and Chelmsford (“Chensford“) Massachusetts as the frontier towns they were at the time.  North of the Merrimack River is wilderness in this map, South are the growing settlements of Massachusetts.  The river serves a critical role for settlers and Native Americans alike as both transportation and a border.  Settlements at this time were largely along the rivers and their tributaries, the Concord and Nashua Rivers.

      That bend in the Merrimack River northward was a critical point in the understanding of this land.  Isolated outposts like Billerica, Groton and Lancaster represented the outer reaches of people like us.  The map shows Lake Winnipesaukee and its many islands, so there was clearly knowledge in 1675 of what lay beyond, but it remained for all intents and purposes a vast, dangerous wilderness for another century until the fortunes of war, attrition in the Native American population and the shear mass of settlers from Europe turned the tide.

      It’s no surprise that the most notable Indian raids of the day were happening along the frontier.  York, Haverhill, Andover, Billerica, Chelmsford, and Groton all suffered Indian raids during the series of wars between the French and British.  Further west Brookfield and Deerfield had similar raids.  These frontier towns were dangerous places, and the settlers there would rarely venture out to tend their fields unarmed.  Towns like Haverhill were building fortifications and the brick 1697 Dustin Garrison for a measure of protection in the years spanning King Williams War and Queen Anne’s War.

      There were a series of conflicts between the English settlers and the Native American population that impacted northern New England.  In all cases the underlying conflict between the expansion of English settlements and the encroachment on the Native American population was a key factor.  French influence on the Native American tribes also contributed significantly in many of the raids in Merrimack River Valley from 1689 to 1713 as raiders were offered rewards for scalps and prisoners.  Living in this area for most of my life I see many reminders of that time in our history, and I always glance over at World’s End Pond and the Duston Garrison whenever I pass either.  Duston’s wife Hannah was famously kidnapped during King William’s War, her baby and many neighbors killed, marched through the town I live in by Abenaki warriors, and later escaped back down the Merrimack River on one of those raids.

      Wars Impacting Northern New England in the Early Colonial Period:

      • King Philip’s War 1675-1678 (Northeast Coast Campaign vs. Wabanaki Confederacy)
      • King William’s War 1689 – 1697 (French and Wabanaki Confederacy)
      • Queen Anne’s War 1702–1713 (French and Wabanaki Confederacy)
      • Dummer’s War 1722-1726 (Wabanaki Confederacy)
      • French and Indian War 1754 – 1763 (French and Mohican, Abenaki, Iroquois and other tribal alliances)

      So Seller’s Mapp of New England was a living, breathing document that was strategically important to the British and by extension the English settlers living in New England.  If matters were largely settled with the Native American population in the Southern New England areas by 1675, they were anything but settled in Northern New England.  Northern Massachusetts, including what is now coastal Maine and New Hampshire were the literally on edge, looking north and west for raiders.  That they would ultimately overpower the Native American population and New France settlements was not a foregone conclusion at the time.  Another reason it completely fascinates me.

    • Where the Narrows Open Out

      Looking at John Sellers 1675 “Mapp of New England” I’m drawn to the place names on Cape Cod. “Yermoth“, Sandwich and Pocasset on the Cape, and the islands of “Martina Vineyard” and “Nantuket“. As with the entire map things are way out of scale, but still a fascinating snapshot of place in 1675 Cape Cod.  The other unique thing about Sellers’ map is that he turns New England on its side, offering a new perspective on the familiar shapes.

      The Pocasset Wampanoag were no strangers to Buzzards Bay, but they lived in the area that is now Tiverton, Rhode Island up to Fall River, Massachusetts and surrounding towns. If a place were going to be named Pocasset wouldn’t it be Tiverton or Fairhaven or some other place on that side of the bay? So how did this little corner of Cape Cod become known as Pocasset?

      The answer might lie in the word itself. “Pocasset” and some similar Algonquin names like “Pochassuck” and “Paugusset” all mean “the place where the narrows open out”. And that certainly applies to this part of Buzzards Bay. For the English settlers choosing Pocasset was likely easier than Pochassuck.  I can imagine the middle school jokes at neighboring towns if they’d gone that route.

      This place was likely visited by the Pocasset often as they traded with the Pilgrims at the Aptucxet Trading Post nearby. In talking about the land and the bay around them it’s probable that’s how the area was described as the bay opens up right after the point of Wings Neck. On the map Pocasset encompasses what is now Falmouth. Given the scale of the map it could be a minor point, or perhaps the entire stretch from Wings Neck to Woods Hole was considered the place where the narrows open out.

      That description fits the mind as well. Looking at old maps, reading books, and traveling to new places opens up my own once narrower mind. I break free of the daily routine and see things in a new way. So having a home away from home in Pocasset is more appropriate than I first thought.

    • The Rose Standish

      A little piece of historical trivia is the name of the very first ship to travel through the Cape Cod Canal when it opened on July 29, 1914.  Following the Jeopardy answering with a question format, What is the S.S. Rose Standish?  And the ship was the perfect choice to be first.

      Rose Standish was the first wife of Captain Myles Standish.  She was one of many who died in 1620 during the first winter after the Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts.  Myles Standish would explore the Manomet and Scusset Rivers three years later considering a canal.  That canal would finally be completed almost three hundred years later with great fanfare, with a future President of the United States, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt, in attendance.

      That first ship, the S.S. Rose Standish, was a coastal passenger vessel built just two years earlier in 1912 and operated by the Nantasket Beach Steamboat Company of Boston.  On that July day in 1914, she led a parade of ships through the canal.  The celebratory mood was likely tempered by news breaking about events the previous day, when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, marking the beginning of World War One.  Almost exactly four years after the canal opened that war would impact the canal itself when a German U-Boat surfaced off of Orleans and fired on a tug towing barges.  That prompted the United States Army Corps of Engineers to take over the struggling private Cape Cod Canal so ships wouldn’t have to take the more dangerous route around the cape.

      The S.S. Rose Standish would be in service into the 1930’s.  There’s a great picture from 1930 of her docked in Boston Harbor, right about when the Cape Cod Canal was being widened to its current 480 feet.  She likely outlived many of the people who witnessed that first trip up the canal 16 years before.  History is full of related twists and turns, and this story offers a good example with Rose Standish, one of the first pilgrims, a young Franklin D Roosevelt and a German U-Boat all playing a part in the same story.

    • Choices & Habits, Hell Yes or No

      Mulling over this Tweet from James Clear today:

      The 2 keys to Elite Results

      1) Make great choices

      2) Build great habits

      Your choices – what you work on, who you work with – create leverage.  A good initial choice can deliver 100x payoff.

      Your habits unleash leverage.  Without great habits, great choices are just potential energy.

      It’s hard to argue with this.  The challenge is in figuring out the great choices in life versus the good or good enough choices.  Which brings me to the Hell Yes or No rule from Derek Sivers.  Yesterday I spoke with a company that’s been trying to recruit me.  I’m not particularly interested in leaving the company I’m at because I feel like I’ve developed some decent momentum.  But a guy I greatly respected worked at this other company and he’s influenced me enough to consider the position instead of saying no right off the bat like I’ve done with other inquiries.  But then I thought of Siver’s Hell Yes or No, and realized that this wasn’t a Hell Yes, so it was indeed a No.  It may or may not prove to be a great choice over time, but it was a useful tool for getting me there.  Ultimately I think it will prove itself accurate the majority of the time.

      I had a business lunch today and the gentlemen I was meeting with mentioned he’d lost 30 pounds by eating right and getting up early to work out.  We both discussed the art of getting up early, and agreed that it begins with going to bed early.  You want 7-8 hours of sleep?  Go to bed earlier.  You want to lose 30 pounds?  Work out consistently when you wake up early.  Without great habits, great choices are just potential energy…

      Another quote that seems to be circulating today:

      “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on.  But that’s not what it means at all.  It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are.” – Steve Jobs

      Today I was going to write about a dozen things, and none of them made it past the first sentence.  There are days when the writing doesn’t come as easy to me.  But screw it, I’m still working to write every day and cast another vote for what that identity.  One day its about habits, the next history, the next turkeys.  I write about what inspires me that day.  Sometimes it comes from observation, sometimes from reading, sometimes from reflection.  Always an eclectic mix of whatever comes to mind.  Not exactly how you build 1000 true fans, but then again I’ve never been one to follow all of the rules.

    • Talking Turkey

      This morning I went for a 3 1/2 mile walk and came across a large tom turkey standing on the side of the road. A little later in my walk I saw another turkey, this time a hen, about twenty feet up in a tree. Two turkeys in 3 1/2 miles isn’t exactly extraordinary nowadays in New England, but I was on the Cape and you don’t think of turkeys and Cape Cod. But like everywhere else in New England the turkey population has exploded.

      When I was a kid running around in the woods of various towns in Middlesex County, Massachusetts I never saw a wild turkey. The first wild turkeys I ever saw were in South Kent, Connecticut in 1993. I remember it because it was a unique experience at the time. But Litchfield County is where you might expect to see wild turkey. It’s also where I saw my first coyote in the wild. Now you can see turkey almost anywhere.

      This exponential turkey population growth took place while we (most of us anyway) weren’t paying attention. Back in maybe 2007-2008 I recall seeing a few here and there but it was still a novel experience. Today in Southern New Hampshire it’s novel if I go a day without seeing or hearing one. There are an estimated 40,000+ turkey in New Hampshire today, and an estimated 200,000+ in New England.

      It wasn’t always this way. When Europeans first settled in New England they started clearing the land for farms. This destroyed the habitat of the wild animals that lived there, and those who didn’t die out from lack of habitat were eliminated through hunting. Turkey, deer, pigeons, wolves, bear, and countless other animals suffered the same fate. By 1850 turkey were largely extinct in New England.

      Efforts to re-introduce turkeys began in the 1930’s, first with releasing domesticated turkey into the wild. When that failed wild turkey were caught in Upstate New York and released in New England states. Over time those turkey reproduced and the population growth began to accelerate. One Tom can mate with many hens, which can hatch 6-12 eggs. With few predators it’s easy to see why the population exploded. Today they’re seemingly everywhere, including a little peninsula jutting out into Buzzards Bay.

    • Dents and Ripples

      “Make a dent in the universe.” – Steve Jobs

      I was thinking about this particular quote while I drove to the local hardware store for potting soil and basil plants.  I don’t believe Jobs had this chore in mind when he asked Apple employees to make a dent in the universe.  He surely meant think and do big things.  Create transformative products.  Be bold…  and the like.  And on the face of it I agree with the request.  And yet I’m probably not going to make a dent in the universe.  I’m not really inclined to either.  Dents are a bit…  abrupt for me.  As a water-based creature I’m more inclined to make ripples.

      Ripples offer their own measure of immortality.  Ripples carry across the surface, impacting the entire body of water.  They intersect with other ripples that in turn create other ripples.  Raising children makes a ripple.  Recycling creates a ripple.  Being a either friendly, generous, loving and good person or a horrible, hate-filled, evil person creates a ripple.  Ripples carry across time, impacting generation after generation.  Martin Luther King, Jr and Gandhi create ripples today, and were impacted by the ripples of Thoreau and others before them.

      Being a ripple person doesn’t let you off the hook, but it does seem more realistic for most people.  Make the biggest positive ripple you can.  Wealthy people like Carnegie made extraordinary ripples across time with donations made possible by the accumulation of wealth.  But until you write that transformative book, or build a billion dollar company, maybe start with holding the door open for someone, smiling and saying hello?  A little act can make a huge impact in someone’s life.

      “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” – Theodore Roosevelt

      We’re all dancing with fate.  Our time could be up at any moment really.  Why not make a few positive ripples today so that if it all ends tomorrow you’re remembered with fondness, you’ve helped steer someone towards a better future, or you leave the planet a little better in some small way?  And if you somehow make it big doing what you do, maybe make a big splash too.  Those create some serious ripples.

    • Catkins and Helicopters and Life at the Edge of the Woods

      When you live on the edge of the woods you become part of the woods. The plants of the woods want to be a part of your garden. The creatures of the woods want to roam free in the clearing that you’ve made for them, and swim (sometimes unsuccessfully) in the pool you’ve placed as an offering. And the pollen, seeds and nuts make an airborne assault on… everything.

      Living here on the edge of the woods for twenty years now, I’ve learned the habits of the woods; just as I know which neighbors mow on Sunday, I know roughly when the acorns and hickory nuts start raining down in the fall, and roughly when the oak catkins and the maple helicopters will fly in spring. Yesterday was day one of the helicopter assault. Tens of thousands of them whirled down into everything – the pool, the deck, the flower beds, into the potted plants, the gutter… everywhere. And I know they’re not done. Looking up into the maples you see clumps of willing volunteers poised to make their own flight. No, it’s not over yet.

      Meanwhile the catkins quietly prepare for their own assault. Oaks do everything later than the maples. They leaf out later, turn color later, and drop their leaves much later in the fall. Everything has its time, and the oaks don’t rush anything. They’ve made probing missions already, but I know they’re holding out until I’ve cleaned up the yard.

      So the pool skimmers pile up clumps of soggy muck that need to be scooped out every morning, and sometimes during heavy assaults a couple of times a day. The patio has its own artwork going, with seed pods and clumps of catkins glued together with pollen, and moss and weeds popping up as the temperatures pull the trigger on the starting gun. Picasso has nothing on Mother Nature. <sigh> Add weeding to the to-do list. And the cleanup begins again, and then again still, until the woods concede another season to me. But we both know they’ve got time in their side.