Election Fever, and a trip to Martha's Vineyard

It's grand theatre, with billion-dollar budgets and full-spectrum media coverage, but even for interested spectators it's a relief its over. Especially for those with a landline/phone number - with endless 'robocalls' - recorded messages - and calls from live party volunteers. In Massachusetts the presidential election was always going to go with Obama, but we had a very close senate race, with significant implications for the overall control of the US Senate at stake. A dozen of us - Harvard Forest staff and fellows living nearby - gathered for the evening in our conference room, with some good Pennsylvanian beer, super-sized packs of unhealthy nibbles and a bottle of champagne (just in case). As always, the earliest results are analysed in minute detail, even if they are only for 'Assistant Dog-catcher, West Texas' type races (locally there was a competitive race for the local 'Registrar of Deeds'). However the drama unfolded as I'm sure you know, and  all that's done now apart from some fine examples of ungraciousness in defeat (e.g. 'the typical Democratic base constituency of the poor, stupid, and illiterate', or 'the growing number of Democrats who are scums, bums, union thugs, perverts, old fools, young fools, racists and traitors'). 

Last weekend, a change of gear from the political drama to the landscape drama of Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard. As the ice sheet receded at the end of the last ice-age, it left gigantic moraines and colossal volumes of sand around the southern edge of New England, in the shape of the islands and penninsulas running from Long Island east to Nantucket and Cape Cod. Several of us migratory Fellows were invited for a weekend to the Harvard Forest Director's house on the island of Martha's Vineyard, and in glorious sun and near record warm temperatures we enjoyed a wonderful contrast to the early winter woods of western Massachusetts. Martha's Vineyard (MV has made a transition from early settlement in 1640 to whaling prosperity and and now as an exclusive and very expensive holiday island. 

This house on Cape Poge is yours for $8.5 million dollars (also required: an insouciant disregard for recent and projected sea-level rise)

 For those with long memories, the island of Chappaquiddick (next to MV) and a certain bridge will stir some memories. In 1969 after a party,Ted Kennedy, Senator, brother of JFK and potential presidential candidate drove off the side of an island bridge leaving his female companion drowned - but failed to report this for many hours. The swirl of conspiracy around this probably ended any presidential hopes. The bridge has since been rebuilt (below), and to my delight, without any evident irony the guard rails either side have been ungraded to anti-tank status. No Kennedy's gonna drive off this bridge any time soon!

 MV has some wonderful coastal scenery, with saltmarshes and endless beaches, and even a large arid pitchpine/scruboak  forest on the central plain of coarse sand. It's here that the Heath hen - a ground nesting bird related to the prairie chicken - finally became extinct in 1932, despite one of the earliest formal efforts  in conservation history. Apparently a 1791 Act to preserve 'Heath-hen and other game' ran into problems with a misinterpretation of 'Heath-hen' as 'Heathen' - not a helpful error in Puritan New England!

Chappaquiddick saltmarsh

endless beaches

pitch-pine forest

 Hurricane Sandy hit the sandy cliffs of southern MV hard, accelerating the long-term erosion trends already present. Part of the unseasonal warmth we enjoyed is connected to this event - the sea here is currently about 4C warmer than normal, allowing the tropical hurricane to maintain its intensity further north than normal.

In the shellfishing harbour at Menemsha, the Hurricane Sandy surge overtopped these quayside posts

Particularly striking was the (probably) doomed efforts of the super-rich to defend their beachfront mansions. At Wasque Point after Hurricane Sandy the owner had initiated this mammoth effort with giant sandbags to stop the cliff erosion.

Wasque Point less than 2 years ago

Post-Sandy efforts to hold back the waves...

the beach a mass of fallen trees and tangled driftwood