Fieldwork Week Ten: Fox Bottom

    Our Team at the Atlantic Edge.   Fieldwork Wellfleet goes to Truro! Well, just over the border! We walked Fox Bottom Road to the Atlantic edge.    This is a walk I love sharing with folks of various hiking experience. Most of the trail is a paved fire road, with only the last quarter mile being an old cart road. It’s a lovely walk through the Truro woods — offering great glimpses of Truro’s varied terrain.   Why paved?    In a sense this is a road to nowhere. At least today. Sure, the Park Service has its rifal range near the road’s terminus, but that’s hardly a destination. The paved road is the final trace of a research facility that operated out there in the Cold War. The buildings — once repurposed as the National Seashore’s Atlantic Coastal Laboratory — were recently razed by the Park Service (in their recent spree of erasing all the cool #&%*@^%! in Cape Cod’s woods).        The not particularly secure abandoned research lab.   Local lore tells us that the Internet was invented there. But the story is a little more nuanced. Eric Williams quoting Richard M. Smith in the Cape Cod Times reveals the bigger story:   “Back in the early ‘50s, MITRE Corporation was given a contract by the U.S. Defense Department to design a radar system to detect incoming Russian bombers. The prototype for the system was constructed in South Truro along Fox Bottom Road. There were three radar units along the road. All three units were dismantled long ago. The only thing left behind from the prototype system are the (Cape Cod National Seashore) lab buildings and cement footings for the radar units.   “The 3 radar units in South Truro were connected by digital modems to the Whirlwind computer at MIT. This was one of the first times a modem was used to send digital data to a digital computer. That’s why I say the Internet was born in South Truro. Others may disagree.”       Interior of the abandoned lab in 2019   At the Atlantic edge of the trail, we talked a lot about erosion. In my six years living ‘in the neighborhood’ I’ve seen this part of the moraine recede at least 30 feet. The spring of the COVID lockdown I’d walk out almost daily, and the erosion that year was intense.    This is a place I depict in a lot of paintings, and a place I’ve come to love dearly. I have hopes that it might inspire other artists, too!       Erosion Comparisons 2020       Erosion Comparisons 2025       An Atlantic Storm in 2019       Rifle Range   …   Fieldwork Saturdays in Wellfleet: Organized by Pete Hocking & AMZehnder Gallery   This summer, we’re inviting creative people — including visual artists, photographers, writers, and others — to join us for community fieldwork sessions in Wellfleet on Saturday afternoons from 2:30 – 5 PM. This is not a workshop and there will be no instructor. Spending time in a place, looking deeply, taking notes, and allowing the place to soak into memory allows one to bring meaningful experience into the studio — and to ultimately work more intuitively.  The sessions are also designed to strike up conversation and relationships among Outer Cape artists. You’re invited to look, to draw, to paint, to photograph, to take notes, to write — and especially to connect with other creative people in our incredible community. These sessions are free and you’re welcome to join us as your schedule permits. Come for one session or all sessions!    We’ll meet at AMZehnder Gallery at 25 Bank Street at 2:30 PM on Saturday and we’ll conclude the start of Gallery Night at 5 PM.    Questions? Contact phocking@gmail.com