Mini hike along Cape Cod's eroding shoreline

The term “Old Cape Cod” is a famous one – but as far as peninsula’s go, it’s actually kind of new. This landscape, built on sand and summer memories, is merely a bit of leftover debris from the last ice age some 16-20 thousand years ago. It’s here to enjoy today, but it won’t be around forever. As the landscape shifts and fluctuates, battered by wind and sea, homes will be lost and maps will be re-drawn. The greatest change in the landscape over the last few decades has been along Nauset, where a new inlet was created in 1987 during a Nor’easter and again a little farther north after a storm in 2007. Homes that were thought to be safe and secure are long gone. But it's been happening for centuries - this little group of historical cottages, called the Sand City Camps (seen below) were lost to the sea decades ago.

More recently, a beach community called the North Beach Chatham Cottages has been eroding since the 1987 storm and is down to is down to 4 remaining structures. 

This photograph shows the inevitable...

And what follows...

Here’s a great visual of the changes the coastline has seen between 1984-2013

Although Cape Cod is one big mass of evolving and dissolving sand and land, sometimes it’s hard to see with your own eyes where all this erosion is taking place. Nature is tricky like that. There is a little hike that I like to take in Eastham between Nauset Light and Marconi Beach that reveals some of the Cape's secrets. There are a couple different ways to get to this area by biking or hiking the meandering trails and fire roads of the Cape Cod National Seashore. There’s access from the rail trail that starts in Wellfleet as well as a number of other access points throughout the park. I’m pretty familiar with this area, so I just look for a well-established trail that’s heading due east. There’s only one outcome – an 80 foot dune.

When you get to the cliff - you stop! This part is along what used to be Nauset Light Beach Road. Most of the paved road has crumbled away and fallen to the sands below...

And it's not going to relent anytime soon...

The path I followed literally disintegrated into the dune and disappeared…

   

A new path was stomped into the woods several yards away from the dangerous edge...

I'm pretty sure the entire Cape isn't going to slip into the sea anytime soon, but New England is certainly due for a major Hurricane in the near furure - and with it will come the inevitable changes...

One last thing, if you ever get a chance to see an amazing band (Banditas) perform in a beach parking lot on top of a dune - you should do that...