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April 2022 -- In this issue:
• Sharon Dunn's new book
• April is National Poetry Month - a call for poetry submissions
• Herring Counters Seminar
Special Guest - Sheryl Jaffe,
Wellfleet Historical Society
• Earth Day Beach Cleanup, April 23
• World Fish Migration Day. May 21
• May 3, Mark your Calendars!
Opening of art exhibit at Prez Hall, Wellfleet, beginning of "May is Celebrate Herring River Month"
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SHARON DUNN
author of An Island in Time
Exploring Bound Brook Island
Its Land & People,
Its Past & Present
SHARON DUNN's forthcoming book—An Island in Time: Exploring Bound Brook Island, Its Land & People, Its Past & Present (The Rose Press, 2022) — will be available in May. It tells the story through time of one particular square mile in Wellfleet, and includes poems, historic and contemporary photos and maps, as well as original research into the community that once lived there. She plumbs the mysteries of this "rural paradise," as her friend Jack Hall, a long-time resident, called it.
Sharon and her husband acquired the stewardship of the antique Ebenezer Lombard Atwood House on the island in 1993. “I’m not an historian, an archaeologist, or geologist, but I have a passion for the island,” she says. At first she wrote poems about her experience of the island. Then she wanted to explore deeper into history, and that required moving into prose.
The take-away story, Dunn feels, is what has been done to the island since European settlers chose the same locations to build where evidence shows that native peoples had lived first. The best spots of land were already cleared, closest to drinking water and food sources from the Herring River and bay. The impact of European settlers’ herds of cattle and sheep eating all the native vegetation and stripping bare of all the original timber tell a story of misuse of resources. How do we want to preserve this special place and its history going forward, she asks.
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Dunn did extensive genealogical work on the Atwood, Rich and Hopkins families to figure out who, of the descendants of original homesteaders, were related to whom. She relates fascinating histories of the early Cape Codders who built fish houses, wharfs, and boat yards on the Herring River. She describes the vibrant week-long Methodist Camp Meetings on Bound Brook Island held in the early 1800s, that drew enthusiasts from as far away as Boston to hear famous evangelists of the day including Lorenzo Dow. She tramped the island, early on with Jack Hall, and created maps including “Bound Brook Island Houses and Roads Vanished since 1850.”
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Sharon Dunn has published a memoir as well as two books of poetry. She was editor-publisher of the literary magazine AGNI for ten years and was partners with her brother Michael Dunn in building Duncraft, now a third-generation family business in New Hampshire. She lives in Western Massachusetts and on Bound Brook Island with her husband, author John J. Clayton.
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HERRING COUNTER SEMINAR
Sheryl Jaffe, Museum Coordinator, Wellfleet Historical Society, gave a virtual presentation at the Herring Counter Seminar, March 17. She discussed the early indigenous, African American, and European settlers in the Upper Herring River.
The schoolhouse was located on Old Kings Highway, just North of where the counters come to observe herring at the corner of Old King's Highway and Black Pond Road. Originally opened in 1798, this was the location of Wellfleet's first schoolhouse. The building shown in the photo was an 1800s replacement of the original.
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VOICES OF THE RIVER
A Call for Poetry
Inspired by the Restoration
of Herring River
In Honor of
National Poetry Month, April 2022
The restoration of Herring River and its estuary is inspiring many poets, painters, photographers and writers. Friends of Herring River will be accepting poems throughout the month of April to be published in a future newsletter.
Please submit poems relevant to the river and life around it. Submit your poem to: bchapman@herringriver.org and drheault@herringriver.org
Friends of Herring River
P.O. Box 565, South Wellfleet, MA 02663
(508) 214 0656 www.HerringRiver.org
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WELLFLEET CELEBRATES EARTH DAY
with a Community Beach/Pond Clean Up,
taking place on Saturday, April 23.
Please consider volunteering. The event is sponsored by Friends of Herring River, the Wellfleet Shellfish Advisory Board, the Wellfleet Shellfish Department, the Wellfleet Recycling Committee, Mass Audubon Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary and other community groups.
The Wellfleet DPW will provide trash bags and a dumpster at Mayo Beach from 9am-2pm. A volunteer will be on site from 9-9:30 am to help with beach and pond assignments or email bbrennes@wheatonma.edu if you have a favorite spot for this activity
This is also Amnesty Day at the Transfer Station, so it's a good weekend to clean out at home as well as in our environment!
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WORLD FISH MIGRATION DAY
The 5th World Fish Migration Day (May 21, 2022) will raise global attention for migratory fish and the importance of their migration routes!
Friends of Herring River is planning an event May 21 from 11am to 1pm at the Gull Pond Parking Area. Details are coming.
World Fish Migration Day is raising global attention for endangered migratory fish, like our Herring River herring and eel. Migratory fish are particularly threatened by barriers such as weirs, dams, dikes, and sluices, built for water management, hydropower and land drainage. This global day supports free passage of all migratory fish.
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UPPER HERRING RIVER CULVERTS
The Cape Cod National Seashore and the Town of Wellfleet are actively planning new culverts in the Upper Herring River at the Old Kings Highway and Schoolhouse Road locations. These locations are not within the Phase 1 restoration area but were identified by Friends of Herring River as culverts critical to fish passage and in need of replacement.
Friends worked with all private land abutters to secure permission for work on their land. In addition, Friends sourced purveyors of bridge and culvert building materials suitable for this rural woodland setting
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LEST WE FORGET
THE AMERICAN EEL...
We talk often about the alewife and blueback herring that migrate up the Herring River to spawn. But every year we also see elvers - baby American eels -- the size of a black bobby pin -- that do not spawn in the ponds but fatten up there and then migrate out of the ponds with the herring in the fall. We honored the American eel with this Friends of Herring River winning entry in the Wellfleet's Fourth of July Parade in 2015. It was designed by Eben Portnoy and built by Eben and his father, John. It was carried by cohort of strong, young AmeriCorps volunteers on their day off.
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Herring River Currents is a publication of Friends of Herring River and includes events, art, literature, poetry, photography, history and culture inspired by the Herring River watershed in Wellfleet and Truro, Massachusetts. Thanks for reading and thanks to our contributors.
Lisbeth Wiley Chapman, Editor
bchapman@herringriver.org
Follow us on Social Media at Facebook and Instagram.
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