Discovering Cape Cod’s New Pilgrims within the Rivian R1S

Right here lyes the physique of M. Samuel Brown

Dec’d Might ye 3d 1739 within the 43d Yr of his age

Poor Sam Brown. His slate tombstone has grown moss-covered in simply the six years since I noticed him final, and extra of his neighbors’ memorials have cracked and crumbled. The final decade has taken extra of a toll than the prior 300 and fifty-odd years. 

Now he has to sit down in stony silence on the Cove Burying Ground in Eastham, on Cape Cod, whereas I step on the blades of grass that sprout from his grave, making an attempt to piece collectively relationships, one great-grandfather by one great-grandmother at a time, over two acres of grass jeweled with morning dew.

Rivian R1S touring Cape Cod

It’s true: By the household tree, I’m a Pilgrim, or at the least from them. However I’m a nasty Puritan. I’ve violated just about each rule the Puritans needed enforced. I’ve not gone forth and procreated. An 18-year-old cat is accountable for my religious existence. I’ve sinned, although in essentially the most unremarkable methods.

To some, I’m a nasty American—a Deep Southerner who’s wandered off the political reservation whereas I’ve bodily moved nearer to its beating purple coronary heart, a spot the place ersatz Puritans are as soon as once more those steering the ship.

We could have taken to soil first in Plymouth, however I do know my individuals come from elsewhere. I head for that secure harbor, and hope nonetheless feels as welcoming because it did earlier than our nationwide divisions hardened into ominous divides.

I had began this morning in Plymouth, the place I knew a few of my ancestors had stood, 4 hundred years in the past, on the lookout for freedom of their selecting. My wants have been less complicated: a McMuffin, espresso, and DC fast-charging for the Rivian R1S that can transport me towards a deeper understanding of my tribe. 

Rivian R1S touring Cape Cod

First encounters

I wave a “‘until subsequent time” to Sam, then comply with the street north from Eastham, in tandem with the a part of the Cape Cod Pilgrim Touchdown Path that leads all the best way to the tip of the Cape, to see the dunes as they might have been seen by cautious eyes that watched the Pilgrims strategy a whole bunch of years in the past.

I flip north on Race Level Street, the place kayakers glide silently throughout a Wyeth-perfect panorama, and wend towards the north face of the Cape, the place I uncover you’ll be able to take your SUV off-road—should you’re correctly outfitted. The R1S has the flexibility to cruise on right here with its off-road drive modes, its gifted traction programs, its excessive floor clearance, and its bluff ends. Oversand beach driving on the Cape Cod Nationwide Seashore requires a allow and a few primary deal with, together with all- or four-wheel drive, which the Quad-Motor R1S has, and a tow strap and shovel, which I don’t. 

Rivian R1S touring Cape Cod

I don’t miss out on a lot. Don’t get me incorrect, the Rivian is succesful, however it’s extra vital on this journey as a messenger: We will have our Made in America satisfaction and romantic imagery of our previous, whereas we query what lies beneath and do higher. No fossils right here, simply gasoline for our future.

I accept a stroll to the highest of the dunes and look over the ocean and see what the Nauset tribe of the Wampanoag individuals could have seen, earlier than what we name the “First Encounter.” Like most tales of colonists and the colonized, it’s much less completely happy than what we have been taught simply 50 years in the past. About 4 thousand native Individuals lived on the Cape earlier than the Pilgrims arrived. These Nauset individuals had, by the point of the 1620 crossing, already seen a few of their individuals kidnapped and brought to Europe to be dehumanized and exploited, whereas the remaining have been decimated by plague that had killed as many as 100,000 individuals within the earlier three years. They’d cause to worry the individuals on the ship they might have seen in early November, circling across the shore. 

Map of the Day: After casting anchor in Provincetown, the Pilgrims set out within the Mayflower’s shallop (a small boat) to comb Cape Cod Bay for a extra hospitable place. This hand-drawn map from June 1953 traces the shallop’s path to Plymouth, “a spot match for scenario.” #MapOTD pic.twitter.com/vTMWjVCe0I

— NatGeoMaps (@NatGeoMaps) November 20, 2018

Pilgrims and progress

The Mayflower swept previous the sandy seashore, underneath grey skies and the fixed menace of sleet and snow—lastly, in the end, to land. Hustled to sea very late, on September 6, 1620, headed for the Virginia colony, it had been on the open sea for 9 weeks when the Cape got here into view. Passengers had died or grow to be gravely in poor health, and the boat reeked of human filth, however nonetheless, inside, these passengers noticed a brand new world and new lives—whereas these on shore noticed extra hassle on the horizon.

On the Mayflower they have been indentured servants, infants, wives, sailors, cooks. Most have been non secular self-exiles, from the Church of England and England itself. They’d drifted to Holland, till they noticed their youngsters changing into too Dutch. They boarded the ship as soon as extra, late that summer season. All have been Pilgrims—however solely most have been Puritans. On the ship, some “strangers” who had nothing to do with Puritanism had boarded, solely searching for financial and political freedom.

I drive to the west aspect of city, following the overall route of the Mayflower because it sought out a secure harbor. The boat had sailed the size of Cape Cod from the primary sight of land on November 5, 1620, till it hit shallows and turned north, curving westward with the solar round Race Level. It rounded the cape and anchored close to a spot off the hooked finish on November 11, 1620, the place a celebration set foot, signed the Mayflower Compact, and agreed to band collectively. 

Rivian R1S touring Cape Cod

Some name it the inspiration of American democracy—however that too requires extra research. Not a lot was democratic of their mission. The Puritans have been strict moralists; solely their imaginative and prescient of God was the right one. They have been reformers and separatists who needed to obliterate the previous methods of worship and create a brand new utopia underneath non secular authority—no democracy in any respect. 

However this spot, that may someday be Provincetown, wouldn’t suffice. They wanted a greater place to shelter and to develop meals than the sandy, hilly terrain of the Cape. Whereas most on board gathered firewood, washed filthy garments, and fumigated the ship with branches of juniper, a crew constructed a small boat and explored the shore for weeks, trying to find a greater place to winter. They put foot on shore close to modern-day Eastham, and made first contact with the Nauset, close to what someday would grow to be the Cove Burying Floor. 

The “First Encounter” proved temporary: A celebration of Pilgrims set foot on the sand, explored the woods, and ran from it screaming as arrows sang by them—the warning photographs fired by Nauset who had cause to worry the foreigners. On December 16, 1620, after a number of conflicts with the Nauset, the Mayflower steered out into Cape Cod Bay and pushed westward, on to the Pilgrims’ subsequent vacation spot, the following place the place they could be nearer to utopia—a spot the place they have been in unquestioned command.

Rivian R1S touring Cape Cod

From Provincetown to “P-City”

The scent of P-City hits like smelling salts. Musty ocean breezes mingle with freshly minimize grass. Dank weed points from the hashish outlets on the Industrial Road strip, and entangles itself with the tacky curlicues of Spiritus’ bowling-alley pizza and the sugary whiff of Portuguese malasadas. 

It’s all soundtracked by the babble of curler luggage on cobblestones and the babble of individuals as they migrate towards the quick ferry again to Boston. There, one factor’s nonetheless because it was a whole bunch of years in the past: the shouts of the city crier. Provincetown nonetheless has one, in fact, solely now the crier’s a Broadway queen. 

A few of the Pilgrims might need had a stroke, one observer informed NPR, in the event that they noticed what Provincetown, after the Pilgrims, had grow to be: most likely the queerest place on earth, per capita, per diem, per nevertheless you wish to calculate it. 

Samuel Brown couldn’t have recognized that, someway, a whole bunch of years later, one in every of his descendants can be penning this to you from a desk at one of many gayest locations in Provincetown. He wouldn’t have even understood what “homosexual” was, since queerness as identification wasn’t actually a factor till the latter half of the nineteenth century, simply because the native whaling business crashed. It turned a haven for “inventive” individuals, within the coded body of the day. Locations flip queer once they can’t afford to show queers away.

Rivian R1S touring Cape Cod

Provincetown has been enshrined as a queer place because the early 1900s, and now it’s a capital of queerness. It has grow to be synonymous with the archipelago of locations that my tribe arrange around the globe the place we may congregate, pilgrims of one other sort with one other mission: Key West, Bondi, the Castro, Boystown, Decatur. To some, Provincetown was and stays a sin vacation spot, a helltown. To the individuals who make pilgrimages right here every summer season, it turns into a group. A spot to be. 

For a decade, we made an annual pilgrimage to Provincetown every July—and as expensive because it’s grow to be, it’s nonetheless good to be again, after six lengthy years. Little has modified. Drag exhibits take up most each marquee: reality-TV champions elbow apart the endearing oddness of Dina Martina and the muscular camp of Varla Jean Merman. Cabaret exhibits, a Wayland Flowers and Madame homage. 

As a result of it’s basically an “different,” too—a powertrain perversion of SUV custom when you scratch at its paint—the Rivian matches proper in. After I drive down Industrial Road trying to find a parking spot, I discover who notices the SUV. It’s nonetheless new and unheralded sufficient to be a standing image in a spot the place shirtless younger Romanian guys pedal-cab individuals for suggestions down the primary drag. The R1S will get the approving nod of the “flip-flop, tank high, don’t cease” crowd lining up for tea dance on the Boatslip, and from the proprietor of a ‘76 Eldorado parked discreetly in a storage—as discreetly as any ‘76 Eldo could be.

It’s reassuring to gauge the reactions, whilst pedestrians wish to stroll immediately into the R1S’s path. I get it. I too am within the thrall of its 4 electrical motors, its easy and prompt acceleration, and—to make sure—the raffish profile it cuts. The Rivian belongs right here. So does everybody, anybody. What Provincetown as soon as was, it has grow to be once more: a refuge.

Rivian R1S touring Cape Cod

Monuments to the previous

No parking spots seem wherever close to the place I wish to dock the R1S for the weekend. The one method to go is up. I wind across the block down Bradford Road towards the excessive level of the tour of Cape Cod—the tallest granite constructing within the nation, the place parking is a measly $20.

Rivian R1S touring Cape Cod

The Provincetown Museum at Pilgrim Monument gives a latter-day monument to those that we honor as conquerors. Like later generations of Civil Warfare monuments, this one was christened within the eyes of people that needed to enshrine Puritans as a shining ethical power. It’s complicated in context, a granite Italianate exclamation level that tacks down the city as if it have been in peril of blowing away.

On a superb day you’ll be able to see Plymouth from the highest of the 252-foot-tall Pilgrim Monument, when you climb its 166 steps and 60 ramps on what occurs to be the most well liked day of the summer season. On the best way up, I contact the marble plaques that mark the founding of Massachusetts cities. I word that Foxborough got here into existence in 1681 and so they solely have 5 Tremendous Bowl rings to point out for it. Do higher, Foxborough. 

Rivian R1S touring Cape Cod

I attain the highest, drenched in sweat, and look over the tennis courts the place I’ve foot-faulted, the attic residences the place I’ve slept off a hangover, then turned to the opening pierced into the stone, the one dealing with south—the place the Mayflower would have dropped anchor. And simply as rapidly, I beat the trail again down into the accompanying museum.

Air-con lets me soak within the panels of historical past that mark not solely the Monument’s development through the top of the period of monuments—the early 1900s, when vital males felt the necessity to commemorate imposed glory whereas it already was displaying indicators of its inherent weak point—but in addition the story of Provincetown’s queer heritage and most significantly, the story of the Wampanoag nation and the Nauset individuals. In the end—cultural change takes time even in a really progressive spot on the map—the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum has made the Wampanoag story a part of its everlasting expertise. It’s an acknowledged a part of the story.

Rivian R1S touring Cape Cod

Discovering your tribe

I can hint my household again to America as early as 1625 via Cookes and Doanes and Hardings and Rings—ur-American names, all—however the oldest grave I’ve but seen is that of Samuel Brown. 

How did he get right here? Effectively, after his forebears landed in Plymouth, and determined it wasn’t Puritanical sufficient, they struck out for a spot of their very own on the Cape. I cruise by him once more a number of days later, on the journey again house, the place he lies within the Cove cemetery alongside together with his father, William, and mom, Mary Murdoch.

Cove is the one Cape Cod cemetery with Mayflower passengers, it seems, many in unmarked graves. Different burials have been marked by a gravestone and a footstone, to indicate the individual lies in mattress in everlasting sleep. Nonetheless others, like Samuel Brown’s marker, have elaborate carving on them, with wings and crossed bones superimposed by a cranium. If it sounds creepy, it’s really fairly stunning. When moist, the slate goes ink black once more, the image of gravitas, with all of the splotches of inexperienced that colonize it.

Rivian R1S touring Cape Cod

It appears unusual to cease and say a prayer or to stake a small American flag in his honor, since I wouldn’t know something concerning the former and he by no means knew the starred-and-striped latter. He will get toasted with a Dunkin’ massive iced latte as an alternative. 

What would he take into consideration that—or about me? Possibly the identical issues that the Puritans suppose again house, the place it’s not all the time comfy to speak about present occasions with well-meaning individuals. The place, if you attempt to clarify how lives are being made unlawful once more, you’re answered with a shrug. The place the very thought of secure harbors—secure areas—is met with scorn. 

You will need to be in these locations, to face for tolerance and acceptance, even when awkward disagreement is the most effective I can handle. It’s because the Provincetown museum mildly passes off the historical past of the First Encounter: “difficult.” 

It’s much more vital to know the place we belong. Provincetown, as distant as it might be a lot of the 12 months, is the place all my tribes come collectively. Possibly subsequent time, it received’t have been six years between visits. I can’t wait too lengthy, I do know. One other six years and Samuel Brown’s slate tombstone could have crumbled into unreadable fragments. 

Till then, after I consider the place I’m discovered, I’ll consider this place—of the street to Race Level because it races towards sundown, the place Cape gentle flatters the panorama with unheralded amber, the place the ocean grass bends and waves hi there because it welcomes me again.