National Seashores

Great Beach Hill

September flew by, y’all.

I mentioned in my last post that I’m working on adding a newsletter section to my website.

I’ve made decent progress on that.

If you check my home page, you’ll see a subscription section at the very bottom where you can sign up.

I did basic tests (e.g., I signed up myself) and added bits like a customized confirmation email that goes to your inbox, which gives you complete control over whether you want to join up or not.

However, the newsletter itself isn’t quite ready to go live.

The short story is that there are a bunch of different things under the hood to make communicating with subscribers work that I don’t have sorted out just yet.

I managed to get out a few times to compose photos over the last 30 days.

As a result, I’m a few sessions “behind” on sharing my work.

I don’t consider that a bad thing.

For one, I feel really good about dialing back going through the selecting-and-editing-and-writing-a-blog process to once a month.

Also, having a couple of images in my pocket, so to speak, gives me breathing room for times when I won’t be able to get out for whatever reason (I’m slightly shivering at the thought of what winter in New England might be like).

One of the places I visited this month to photograph is Cape Cod National Seashore.

This is a sprawling park system covering a 40 mile area with no less than six beaches to take in.

After a quick stop at the main visitor’s center, I gassed up and headed to Great Island in Wellfleet.

From there, I walked something like two miles to Great Beach Hill.

The trail between these two points meanders through marsh and woodland.

I also had the option of visiting the remains of a tavern that mariners during colonial times used between whaling trips.

The trail is sporadically marked, and I questioned whether I was still going the right way more than once.

And I imagined what it might have been like for early settlers traveling through what felt like a pretty isolated area to me.

I joked with friends that the path, well away from civilization even today, would have been perfect for highwaymen to lay in wait, murder unsuspecting travelers, loot them for valuables, and dump their bodies in the salt marshes.

Great Beach Hill gave off very windswept vibes.

I used that to my advantage a few times as I was composing scenes, as I wanted to hint at the wind blowing through the long grasses on the hill.

I took the photo I’m sharing towards the end of the outing.

I didn’t see any highwaymen on the long jaunt back to my car.

But I did note that my 60L camera bag is just too much for me to deal with on these kinds of outings where I need to hike several miles each way to remote locations.

I have since downsized to a 35L bag.

My back is a lot happier, and the bag will still hold everything I need to bring with me while distributing the weight better.

I also saw one far younger guy who was making his way barefoot along the rough trail with his girlfriend to the beach.

Just the type of equal parts bravado and foolhardiness that highwaymen would likely notice.