Cape Cod, by Jove!
A Full Week Features a New Dimension— An Afternoon of Science, Courtesy of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
By Gary Kessler
W
hat weather! I do not remember a continuous stretch of mid-October warmth in Brewster such as we had this past week. We had our share of wetness, mind you—Wednesday afternoon into Thursday brought an unending series of waves of heavy rain. But even on the two clear overnight periods on Monday and Thursday, the temperature was stable and surprisingly mild. Another surprise was our miraculous luck with the rain; it only came down heavily when we had scheduled indoor events, notably the WHOI activities on Wednesday afternoon. All our hiking, boating, and biking either squeaked between raindrops or were in completely fair weather. Even our educator/guides from Massachusetts Audubon, Jenette Kerr, Emily Wolf, and Amy Ferreira, were able to keep relatively dry on our outings with them. Monday’s ride up from New York City was a pleasant one, though several teachers remarked at coastal New England’s
unusual absence of brilliant fall colors. We arrived safely and without incident at the Cape Cod Sea Camps, and proceeded to stake out our quarters in the cabins. There was ample afternoon daylight left to allow for split sessions of soccer and observational drawing before dinner. Jenette, from Massachusetts Audubon, delivered a wonderful after-dinner presentation; it featured an explanation of the oceanography of Stellwagen Bank, a guessing game with boys role-playing stages of aquatic animals adapted to the area, and one boy reading aloud a naturalist’s eyewitness account of a dramatic encounter on Stellwagen Bank involving representatives from every stage of the food chain, from plankton to killer whales. The day’s events concluded with journal-writing and boys reading their own ghost stories. The boys were unfazed by the lack of a campfire because of overly damp firewood; they snacked on cold marshmallows and chocolate instead of “s’mores” with no complaint. Now that’s adaptive behavior!
Winter 2012? •? 33