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Fort Hill

    ENVIRONMENT

    After 6-Year Delay, Seashore Carries Out Prescribed Burn at Fort Hill

    Housing costs hindered hiring of a Park fire officer; now DOGE is doing the same

    By

    EASTHAM — On any other sunny spring day, Fort Hill would be dotted with hikers, dog-walkers, and nature lovers. But on March 12, the historic grassland that overlooks Nauset Marsh was instead populated by a crew of workers clad in flame-resistant gear and carrying drip torches and backpacks full of water.

    A National Park Service fire crew member prepares for the controlled burn at Fort Hill on March 12 by dousing the surrounding area with water from a fire hose. (Photos by Emily Schiffer)

    They were here to perform a 14-acre prescribed burn. Historically, such burns were a regular and important component of the Seashore’s forest management strategy, but since Park Fire Management Officer David Crary Jr.’s retirement on Jan. 1, 2022, the park has not been able to carry any out. In addition, for the two years before his retirement, the work was curtailed by the pandemic, Crary told the Independent. The Fort Hill fire represents the first significant prescribed burn in the National Seashore since 2019.

    “Hopefully, this will get people excited about fire again,” said Karen Kopper, National Park Service ecologist for the Northeast Region, who was in town from her base in Springfield for the controlled burn at Fort Hill. Prescribed burns serve to improve habitat, but they are also a safety strategy, used to establish firebreaks to prevent the spread of wildfires.

    According to Crary, before his retirement, Seashore staff aimed to do a controlled burn on half of Fort Hill every spring while mowing the other half every fall. This regimen, he said, allowed the ecosystem to regenerate without harming animals that relied on the taller grasses. This strategy was part of Crary’s larger management plan during his time as fire management officer, which called for 500 acres of land to be cleared mechanically or by burning every year — though he did not always reach that target, he said.

    Henry Torpey, AmeriCorps Cape Cod program supervisor, lights the brush under the guidance of Tom Fielden, the burn boss.

    The Seashore posted Crary’s job in April 2024, but in November it had still not filled the position and needed to repost it. Deputy Supt. Leslie Reynolds told the Independent at that time that “the cost of living on Cape is challenging for so many, and it also affects the Seashore’s ability to hire this position.”

    Now, thanks to a federal hiring freeze that President Trump initiated by executive order on Jan. 20, the fire management position will not be filled for the foreseeable future.

     

    Fire for the Ecosystem
    Periodic fires are part of the ecosystem of the Outer Cape, Kopper said. Historically, most of the Outer Cape would have experienced periodic fires, either caused by lightning or set purposely by Indigenous people, who used fire to shape the landscape, according to information posted on the NPS website. The advent of European colonization ended this practice and led to widespread fire suppression across North America, but prescribed burning can help to mimic this historic use of fire on a small scale.

    Controlled burns turn dead grass into ash and kill multiflora rose and other invasives, allowing native plants to grow in the spring.

    “We should do more burns,” said Seashore Supt. Jennifer Flynn at the Fort Hill burn. “We need lots of little fires instead of big fires.”

    Kopper noted that the primary goal of this burn was hazard fuel reduction — Fort Hill’s extensive dry vegetation and proximity to structures make it a particularly dangerous place for a fire to begin, so burning it in advance creates a “fuel break” that prevents an accidental fire from spreading.

    As for its ecological benefits, Kopper said that without burning grasslands, a thick layer of thatch builds up that makes it difficult for new plants to grow. Fire turns that thatch into ash, opening up the soil to sunlight and providing nutrients for new plants. Burning in the dormant season is particularly beneficial, she said, because it helps foster spring growth.

    Brian Daigle, firing boss; Amy Burgess, holding boss; and Brian Everett, Mass. DCR forest fire patrolman, monitor the burn.

    Tom Fielden, the fire management officer at the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve in West Virginia, who was the “burn boss” for the Fort Hill burn, said that at Fort Hill fire helps control the abundance of non-native species like multiflora rose that would dominate the meadow if left unchecked. “It’ll want to take over, and then it’ll start choking out all the native grasses,” he said.

    Kopper agreed. “We’ll have more of the natives and flowering plants and grasses than you would if you just had this dead thatch layer,” she said. She expects the burned section of Fort Hill to have many more wildflowers and thicker green grass come spring.

     

    The Day of the Burn

    The crew of some 20 people who assembled at Fort Hill that Wednesday included representatives from the Seashore, Acadia National Park, Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, and the Mass. Dept. of Conservation and Recreation.

    Smoke blows over one of the firebreaks that were established around the site to ensure that only certain areas burned.

    The crew kept a constant eye on the weather, radioing each other up-to-date measurements on wind speed, air temperature, humidity, wet bulb temperature, and fine dead fuel moisture — a measurement of the moisture content of smaller fuels like dead grass, leaves, and twigs. These numbers were recorded to ensure the burn was “within prescription” as outlined by the burn plan, Kopper said.

    In preparation for the burn, which covered the south-facing portion of the hill, NPS staff mowed a perimeter, raked all dead vegetation around it, and sprayed the surrounding vegetation with water to prevent flying embers from starting smaller fires, Fielden said.

    On the morning of the burn, the wind was higher than anticipated, and Kopper said the fire might have to be delayed. “If we’re not in prescription, it’s definitely better not to,” she said. But the crew lit a small test fire near the base of the hill at 11:20 a.m. and watched what happened. As the fire burned, Fielden felt comfortable with its behavior, and at 11:45 a.m., he called for the burn to begin.

    The crew worked slowly, using drip torches to add small amounts of fire on the leading edge of the burn. The goal, Kopper explained, is to let the flame slowly back up the hill as it consumes the dry vegetation.

    As the fire grew, the column of smoke traveled south, flowing down Town Cove toward Orleans, where homeowners in the smoke’s path had been notified by NPS staff, Kopper said. Here the wind proved helpful, as it quickly dissipated the smoke, Fielden said. By 4:30 p.m., the burn was complete. “It went well,” Fielden said.

    FIRE PREVENTION

    Arborist Incident Response Team Takes on ‘Hazard Trees’

    Fire management goal is to create defensible spaces around historic structures

    By

    EASTHAM — Most mornings, the grounds of the Penniman House at Fort Hill are a peaceful setting for birds, squirrels, and the occasional tourist. But on the morning of April 9, the historic building was surrounded by a crew of workers revving chain saws, driving trucks, raising a scissor lift, and hoisting themselves into cottonwoods.

    Andrew Ives, a maintenance worker at the CCNS, throws a slick line into the crown of a cottonwood. He’ll use this line to hoist a climbing rope into the tree and ascend into the branches. (Photo by William von Herff)

    The crew was composed of a handful of Cape Cod National Seashore staff and a team of 14 members of the Arborist Incident Response (AIR) team, a network of experienced arborists from National Park Service sites across the country. When there is need for specialized tree work, such as after a natural disaster or during extensive maintenance, the AIR team is sometimes called to address it.

    “They’ll put a call out for the team, and whoever’s available will go,” said Dan McCarthy, chief of facilities for the Seashore and former program manager for the AIR program. The crew arrived on April 6 and will be working in locations across the Park until April 13. “They’re working 12-hour days when they’re here,” McCarthy said.

    AIR arborists came to the Outer Cape from places as varied as the Statue of Liberty and Fire Island and as far away as Maine and Georgia. Their reason for visiting is an extensive maintenance project aimed at protecting historic structures from the dual threat of tree collapse and fire.

    McCarthy said the team will focus on “hazard trees” — trees and branches that could fail and end up causing damage as they come down.

    At the Penniman House, the main hazard trees are the pair of cottonwoods that stand over the house’s ocean-facing wall. The trees needed to be trimmed of their dead wood and damaged limbs — a job the AIR team, with its members’ extensive experience working in the canopies of trees, is well suited for, McCarthy said.

    Cape Cod National Seashore staff do some work to prevent hazard trees from damaging their historic sites, but without extensive tree climbing experience, it can be challenging to do more than address problems as they arise, McCarthy said. The AIR team, he said, allows the park to get ahead of problems by removing potential hazards before they become dangerous.

    Besides this work at the Penniman House, the crew will take on projects at Nauset Light in Eastham, the Atwood-Higgins House in Wellfleet, and the Jedidiah Higgins House in Truro, among other locations.

    AIR arborists remove a fallen tree in the woods to reduce the fuel load near the Penniman House. (Photo by William von Herff)

    The other key aspect of the team’s work is fire suppression. CCNS abides by the Wildland-Urban Interface Code, a set of guidelines created by the International Code Council to prevent wildfires, said Michael Valora, chief ranger for the Seashore. These guidelines suggest reducing vegetation up to 100 to 150 feet around a building to minimize a property’s “fuel load,” Valora said.

    At the Penniman House, the fuel load reduction involved removing all vegetation within 10 to 20 feet, McCarthy said, and further removing dead vegetation and fallen trees farther away from the house. While some AIR arborists were climbing trees, others were working in the surrounding vegetation to get the Penniman House grounds in line with the code.

    This creates a so-called defensible space, McCarthy said, to keep wildfires contained and prevent them from approaching historic structures.

    Creating defensible spaces is part of the Park’s fire management plan, said Valora. The plan was rewritten in 2022, he said, which led to the Park keeping extra staff on duty during last summer’s period of elevated fire danger.

    Enacting the plan hasn’t been easy without David Crary, the former fire management officer at the Park, who retired in December 2021. Since Crary’s retirement, there has been no dedicated fire officer at the Seashore, according to Valora, although an effort to find an assistant fire management officer is underway — a process he said he hopes will conclude within the next several months.

    There are also plans to perform a controlled burn near the Penniman house in the fall, according to an email from the Seashore’s Linzy French. The purpose will be to reduce the fuel load in the area and preserve the open space that was present when Capt. Edward Penniman had the house built in 1868 and the Knowles family farmed the land between Fort Hill and Skiff Hill to the north.

     

    ON THE LANDSCAPE

    The Fort Hill Cottonwood Speaks

    Resting on her side, a tree downed by a storm still has a story to tell

    By

    EASTHAM — The road to Fort Hill winds through low, rolling fields. Just before it climbs the last hill to the parking area overlooking the inlet, it passes something that catches the eye: off to the right, a flare of sun-bleached roots reaches skyward, framing the view of a pleasantly symmetrical old farmhouse.

    The roots belong to a massive tree. She is on her side. Her long body rests heavy on the lawn, hips and shoulders settled into the wet ground. Her trunk is so thick you cannot see over it. Deeply furrowed bark runs her entire length. On her downward side, exposed wood stripped of this thick armor — an old scar — runs from her root flare into her branches.

    The cottonwood at Fort Hill, at rest on the lawn, frames a view of the farmhouse behind. After four years on her side, she still flushes leaves each spring. (Photo by Kai Potter)

    “She — I call her ‘She,’ ” says Sarah Burrill, “was struck by lightning in 2011.” Burrill is the owner of the home on Fort Hill where the cottonwood stood for more than 150 years.

    Cottonwoods are not native here. Local legend has it that Capt. Edward Penniman brought cottonwood seeds to Eastham from Chicago, where he lived in the winters while building his house.

    Sitting on the far side of a dining room table with a cup of tea, Burrill tells the story of the tree in a voice gentle and steady.

    “It was a direct hit,” she says. “It killed her middle limb and damaged some of her root system. It’s part of the reason she came down in one of the nor’easters we had in March 2018.”

    Burrill speaks of the cottonwood the way one speaks of a family member. Familiar. Tender. Their stories are intertwined. “I grew up in that tree,” she says. “There’s so much comfort and solace in it. And escape.”

    The deeply furrowed bark of the tree. It is lighter than expected; the lightness of the tree’s wood, bark, and tissue is key to its resilience. (Photo by Kai Potter)

    That year, 2018, a series of powerful nor’easters passed through this end of Cape Cod. Fort Hill and the cottonwood tree sit in a direct northeast fetch from the expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. The tree, in its compromised state, gave and fell.

    Assuming the tree was dead, everyone now wanted to know its long story. Visitors stopped by to ask about it. The phone rang. The newspapers assigned reporters to describe the fallen cottonwood. People offered to come with their chainsaws to remove the tree for free, to offer a clean ending to the story.

    But there is something patient about the property at Fort Hill. Better not to rush things, Burrill thought. “Give something its time,” Burrill says through the steam rising in slow curls from the tea. It is a thought spoken to all things. The tree was allowed to rest on the lawn. Chicory and dandelion nestled in a clump of soil brought up in its roots and bloomed purple and yellow.

    Come April of that year, as the ground softened and the fields around Fort Hill began to awaken, so, too, did the fallen cottonwood. “April came, and there were buds,” Burrill recalls. “And there were leaves on it all summer long.”

    Cottonwoods grow fast. Their interior wood is light, and their live tissue is malleable. When this one fell, half of her root system remained in the ground, and the wood that carries water to her canopy bent but did not break. She flushed with leaves that first spring and has done so every spring since.

    After the lightning strike, the large middle limb, once so tall it could be seen from out at sea, died and came down. Burrill collected the fallen wood and began carving bowls. The bowls are light, intuitive and elegant in their simplicity. Their surfaces are patterned like a topography, with staining from fungi that lived in the tree. Little blackened holes in tight clusters tell of bugs that burrowed into the tree’s soft wood.

    A bowl, its shape dictated by a split in the wood, carved from one of the cottonwood’s lost limbs. (Photo courtesy Sarah Burrill)

    “You start working, and it starts to tell its story,” Burrill says of a bowl held in her long fingers. “This was the very first one I did. I started, and then it split.” For some, this might be an ending. “I thought, well, what if I just see where the split goes.”

    Looking out the window at a cherry tree whose roots grow through the ashes of a sister lost long ago, Burrill says, “In our culture, we are so ready to dismiss those who are struggling or those who fall.”

    About the cottonwood, she says, “I love her standing up. I love her lying down.”

    In the very middle of the bare earth where the cottonwood stood, a sapling grows. It came up in 2020 and now stands 15 feet tall. “It is not a seedling,” Burrill says, “but a tree born of the root system that remained in the ground. It is the cottonwood tree herself.”

    Steam rises from the tea. An imperfect bowl sits on the table. “The story is not over,” Burrill says. “I don’t know the story yet.”

    HEALTH

    Walk Therapy

    Being outdoors offers respite from inner worries

    By

    While we are all practicing social distancing, Gov. Baker has declared it’s okay for us to be outdoors for “necessary activities.” For many of us, what’s needed is a walk in the woods or on the shore. After all, nature is the best therapist we have, proven to decrease anxiety and worry and to reduce depression.

    Fortunately, here on the Outer Cape, we are blessed with numerous walking trails and beaches where we can find solace and comfort in seeing that nature goes about its reassuring schedule, virus or no virus. And at this time of year, with no crowds, we can easily keep our distance from one another as we pursue local paths.

    (Photos Edward Boches)

    Silvery oaks that grow low and twisted remind a solitary walker of the power of the wind that shapes the woods on the ocean side.

    Joan Haskell of Truro hikes three or four days a week at Bearberry Hill. She’s dealing with social distancing by taking virtual walks with her daughter Ren Hui Jan, who takes her walks in Manchester, NH. Connected via their mobile phones, they share their sights with each other digitally.

    Sarah Naciri emerges at the summit of Bearberry Hill, facing the great expanse of the Atlantic.

    A forager’s basket displays the colors of Outer Cape finds: the rusty red stripes of reishi mushrooms rest on a bed of Usnea, the lichen, which has many uses — in dyes, tinctures, and as kindling.

     

     

     

    Along the National Seashore’s swamp trails at Fort Hill in Eastham, buds emerge to greet a rainy spring morning.

     

     

     

     

    Who says you have to wait until summer to go barefoot? Three-year-old Leela Okeanos has left her boots behind to run along the soft sand trails at Bearberry Hill in Truro.

     

    The smell of new growth, the bracing breeze on your face, and the quiet of a tree-lined path can give your mind a respite. Erik Spencer’s face says it all about how a walk can lift your spirits.

    THIS THING CALLED LOVE

    A Hermit, a Dancer, and a Vintage Romance

    Casey Clark and Desirée Revoir fill each other’s dance cards

    By

    Casey Clark grew up in Provincetown, and Desirée Revoir is from the other end of the Cape: Sandwich. He left Cape Cod to pursue a career in acting and filmmaking in New York City, and recently returned here to write a book and find solitude. She has lived here her entire life. They met a year ago at a children’s Halloween party at the Flying Fish Café in Wellfleet, though they don’t have children themselves.

    “I was wrangling my nephew,” Clark says. “Des said, ‘You’re an uncle? I’m an auntie!’ ”

    Revoir laughs. “That was my pickup line. I saw Casey walk in and thought, oh… It was love at first sight.”

    Clark takes her hand. “I was in hermit mode,” he says. “But the thought of her kept plaguing me after the party; I knew I needed her number.”

    Revoir is 37 and recently single after a long relationship. Clark says, “On our first date, it came up that I was born in ’73 and I saw her face.”

    “Yeah, I was a bit shocked,” Revoir says, cutting in. “But Casey looks great for a 46-year-old.”

    Casey Clark and Desirée Revoir
    Clothes make the couple: Casey Clark and Desirée Revoir take a dip in vintage outfits from her closet. (Photo Marcia Geier)

    “Well, thanks,” Clark says. They both laugh. Revoir actually loves everything to do with the ’60s and ’70s and has a large vintage clothing collection. In fact, she was wearing a vintage dress at the party.

    “Ah, that dress!” Clark says.

    “It’s long, bright green and purple,” Revoir says. “I would have to say, I stood out a little bit, but I was just being myself. Halloween is an opportunity for me to wear my vintage clothes, but I wasn’t dressed up as anything. To me, it’s just a beautiful dress that caught the eye of a wonderful man.”

    Clark doesn’t disagree. “Afterwards, I kept asking, ‘Who was that woman in the dress?’ We’d introduced ourselves, but I’m horrible with names, so I couldn’t remember her name. Even more than the dress, though, I remember the conversation we were having,” he says. The subject: they both do ocean plunges year-round on the Cape using Wim Hof’s breathing technique for cold water submersion. “I don’t meet many people who are into that,” Clark says.

    Their first date was a walk at Fort Hill in Eastham, followed by lunch at the Canteen in Provincetown. “I kissed him,” Revoir says. “I took the initiative.”

    “And here’s a Cape Cod detail,” Clark adds. “By the time she got home, she got a call from one of her friends who had seen us smooching.” They both laugh again. “That was 20 minutes later, and the news was already spreading.”

    Mutual interests have bolstered their romance. “Even things that wouldn’t have interested me before are fun to do with Des,” Clark says. “Like dressing in vintage clothing.”

    Revoir smiles knowingly. “I’ve got boxes of vintage clothing at home, and I got him to wear these bell bottoms out, with dollar signs on the butt cheeks,” she says. “He dips me on the dance floor and people say, ‘You two are so cute.’ ”

    Being with Revoir has helped Clark write his novel. She works as a project coordinator for an independently owned solar energy company, and he writes nine to five.

    “We have our eyes and ears and our hearts open to the world,” Revoir says.

    “The other night,” Clark says, “it was full moon, and we went out to Head of the Meadow. A pack of coyotes went loping by us.”

    The couple are going on their first trip together this month, to a wedding in Las Vegas. Could it inspire them to do the same?

    “We may get married one day,” Revoir says.

    Clark looks at her with delight. “Wow! Last time we talked about marriage, you said, ‘In Vegas, don’t get me drunk and marry me.’ ”

    Revoir laughs. “I don’t need a ring or kids or a house,” she says. “We just have so much fun together.”

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