Sunday Stroll to Pigeon Cove's Granite Wharf

Sometimes a short walk can contain many interesting little things to write about. The wife and I found this to be true Sunday afternoon in a venture to Pigeon Cove, an important part of Rockport. We were forced to make it a brief stroll because of the length of time it took to make out one of those scholarship forms where the parents are obliged to provide a welter of figures abouft their finances. We knew ours were badly bent but we had to prove it. And that can be hair-tearing if you have that much to spare.

So we both cheated -- on the walk, I mean. We gapped the distance from home to the gate of the North Village by taking to the family chariot. Our objective, the old granite company wharf that the town so wisely bought. The activity there was tremendous. It was a joy to see so many, even if they were all strangers, having so wonderful a time.

Parking across from the entrance on Granite Street, we descended the sharp hill to the pier. The view of the Rockport shoreline is tremendous. It gives a brand new and striking picture of the glories of the South Village's shoreline, its background of church steeples and towers, its beaches.

Making the descent, we felt it would be wise for the town to invest in a protective rail on the south side all the way down before some motorist misjudges and goes tumbling over what is rather a deep fall onto the pier below. Or some youngster walking down could also suffer a nasty fall by going too close to the edge and striking some soft dirt.

It amazed us that although there was nary a sign to note this was town-owned or a public park in any way, yet everyone and his grandmother--and there were several of that age present, just took it for granted that the place belonged to him and his family for fishing along the pier, or for skin diving, or just plain picnicking.

Half-way down we looked back up the hill and around the slopes and realized that here at least remained a part of that old Rockport that on our introduction to the town a score of years ago, we loved so much. Most of the homes had held out against going mid-20th century. Off to one side, a short stretch of beach glistened white with what, from the distance, looked like real beach stones. It was our first sight of it. Already we were won over to that part of town that a dyed-in-the-wool "Cover" of distinction had insisted we must include in our Sunday strolls.

Instead of descending at once to the pier level, we continued along the wide top of the bluff to the sea itself where across the Bay, Straitsmouth Coast Guard Station loomed as did Straitsmouth Inn. A rakish freighter was coming into view as it moved up the coast.

Resembling monoliths out of the days of the Druids, stood massive granite blocks, the last vestiges of the sky-soaring derricks that for years hoisted huge granite blocks from the quarry cars onto the ponderous stone sloops bound for breakwater building in New York, Charleston, oh, anywhere.

Up on that ridge, it was downright raw. The difference in temperature was noticeable as we got off it and onto the pier itself. Here was the most life. A whole squad of skin divers with their families had taken over. Clad in their skin-tight black suits, with the inevitable air tank strapped on back and the Martian masks, they were all over the place, having a real ball of it. They remind us of marathoners. Wherever they go, there go their wives and kids.

Also along the pier edge were amateur anglers from nine to ninety, male and female, patiently sitting it out. Flounders were the principal unwary fish for the day. A lady with four for her catch laughed as she said her hubby would not have to go for fish for the Monday supper. It made her the bread winner for the day.

That lobstermen use the pier is evident by the stacks of pots along one side. But one of the greatest attractions lacked even one visitor until we decided to see how far we could penetrate without getting our shoes wet. We followed the trail of the quarry railroad where only the slimmest remnants of old ties showed through the earth vying with the fresh wild strawberries for attention. That ws the best part of the short walk.

You amble between two sharp bluffs of sheer darkened granite, moist from the spillings of Spring rains. Before you is the stirring sight of the keystone bridge over which thousands of tons of cars used to roll day in and day out. Beneath that bridge your voice sounds even louder. You admire the builders for the successful arch. Continuing you come out onto the scene of a water-filled abandoned quarry to the right, and the sound of a gurgling brook fed by two slim but attractively noisy waterfalls to the left. You try to trace this brook only to find it sneaks underground before your eyes.

An eerie place with its wildness of nature, its strange backdrops that could be the setting for a prehistoric animal show. And then right smack in your face looms a creation of modern man, the dam that helps contain Rockport's surplus water supply.

We must learn more of the Cove and what if offers to the Sunday stroller.

J.P.C., Jr.