Issues → November/December 2008 → Travel →
Cape Ann, MA: The Mystery of Dogtown
(page 4 of 4)
Babson's 1930s project didn't meet with universal approval, though. Reading from a notebook, McCarthy quoted Babson: "My family says that I am defacing the boulders and disgracing the family with these inscriptions, but the work gives me a lot of satisfaction, fresh air, exercise, and sunshine. I am really trying to write a simple book with words carved in stone instead of printed paper."
McCarthy pointed out several of the inscribed boulders, many of which were not immediately visible in the dense woods: Be on Time, Study, Initiative, Keep Out of Debt. "Definitely New England values," said one of Stewart's sons-in-law. "Puritan," said another.
Two of the Stewart grandchildren posed for a photograph beside Use Your Head, and -- after a non-Puritan-like pause for chocolate-chip cookies and snake viewing at Spiritual Power -- the whole group assembled for a picture in front of Kindness.
It was nearly noon, time to turn back. On the way, McCarthy pointed out the place where James Merry, a fisherman and railroad worker also known as "the Dogtown matador," died after being gored by a bull. Three rocks here bore carvings: the first, Jas. Merry Died Sept. 18 1892; the second, First Attacked; the third, a Babson inscription, Never Try Never Win. "Maybe he was referring to the bull," someone said.
Turning back onto the trail, Barbara Stewart headed in the wrong direction. "This way, Mom," said one of her daughters. Stewart swung around: "I'll bet it's easy to get turned around in here." McManus said that it was, that it was easier to find your way in late fall and winter, when the leaves were down. She mentioned, too, that it was beautiful. Stewart paused, took in a sun-dappled boulder to the left and an unexplored path to the right. "We should come back," she said.
I understood what she meant. My own hikes in Dogtown continued through a summer and fall, on Halloween and during hunting season, when I saw hunters but no deer. In the spring, perennials bloomed. I grew to love the place -- I found it finite and increasingly navigable. There was also disappointment. I went in search of Whale's Jaw to find it broken in half; succeeded in locating only 20 cellar holes, when 40 were listed. Even so, through good walks and bad, I felt connected to the place. In mapping its terrain, I figured out some things about myself.
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After the summer of 1931, Marsden Hartley returned to Dogtown one last time, in 1934. But, like a fickle lover, Dogtown withheld from him its previous charms. Or maybe it was Hartley who had changed. Distracted by financial worries and the looming war, he could no longer find the magic of the place. And there was something else: Hartley, in his time away from Dogtown, had embellished it in his mind. "I had lived it over so intensely in my imagination," he wrote, "that the thing looked like nothing when I got here."
Maybe this, then, is one secret of the place: Go emptied of expectation. Plan nothing, set linearity aside, and let Dogtown offer what it will.
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