TO WATCH the Atlantic Ocean roiling off the backshore of outer Cape Cod is to get just a glimpse of the power of the saltwater entity that envelops this long, narrow peninsula, but a glimpse tells the story.
Fueled by a giant pinwheel of moisture that has been spinning just offshore, the recent stretch of cool, cloudy weather has been brutal on Cape Cod’s early summer economy. Those who haven’t postponed coming down here have been wandering around our small villages, looking confused, as if the normal order of the universe had been disrupted. Yet this is a perfect opportunity to bear witness to something residents experience all year long: the drama and beauty of a temperamental force that chomps at the shoreline and pulls the weather down around our heads and shoulders.
Just to watch the ocean when it’s stormy is incredibly humbling - it’s a gigantic, pulsating, living thing, with huge tides precisely programmed by lunar gravity. It can be dormant or docile, but we are very small in the face of it. It can take us out any time it wants to, as it almost certainly will some day. If rising sea levels don’t get us first, a Category 5 hurricane could convince the sleeping giant to reclaim the sand bar it once covered many, many years ago.
The recent, fleeting appearance (and disappearance) of some shipwreck remnants in Truro is a stark reminder of why the waters off the Outer Cape were known as the “graveyard of the North Atlantic.’’ Many a tall-masted schooner met its demise here, and by the 19th century the US Lifesaving Service (precursor to the Coast Guard) established stations along the coast to deal with what was a steady barrage of maritime disasters. The wreck, whose section was seen and photographed by local residents, could have been anywhere from 100 to 300 years old - or even older. Seawater is the ultimate preservative, and the churning brought on by the June northeaster may have turned up something buried under the sandy bottom all these years. That mystery probably will not be solved.
Humanity has a long, difficult, and rewarding relationship with the ocean, whose share of our planet’s surface certainly puts our claim of dominant species into serious question. For most of its history, Cape Cod was a place where people depended on the ocean for sustenance and were at its mercy in so many other regards. Many local fishermen lost their lives just by trying to eke out a living. Many families struggled through long winter months made much harder by ocean storms. The bounty of the sea came and went in many unpredictable ways.
The idea of Cape Cod as a summer playground is a fairly new concept, one that evolved in the 20th century as a successor to the sea-based activities that had sustained the peninsula for the previous 300 years but eventually proved themselves unsustainable. The establishment of a national seashore in the early 1960s transformed the landscape by ending the clear-cutting of woodlands and new construction within its borders and protecting the fragile beaches from the negative environmental impacts of inevitable commercial development.
But any development in close proximity to the backshore would have suffered the same fate as the “protected’’ beaches have all these years - a near-constant pounding from wind and water that can break through any defense and pushes back anybody who stakes a claim on its turf. The old-timers on Cape Cod knew it was a bad idea to build too close to the beach, but the city folk would have had to find out the hard way.
If you take just a few minutes to sit and watch the ocean - especially on a day when big waves are rolling and crashing, and undercurrents can be seen sweeping and swirling - the enormity and strength of the ocean make themselves clear. This is a living thing that itself is filled with life, but it is not necessarily a hospitable environment for us. It’s awesome to look at, but deep respect is strongly advised.
Hamilton Kahn lives in Wellfleet and is host of “In The News’’ on WOMR-FM in Provincetown. 
