Mark Adams at a previous event at the Hawthorne Barn.
Mark Adams Explores Our Coastal Resiliency at Twenty Summers
by Steve Desroches
If you close your eyes and take one handful of sand from Wellfleet and another from Provincetown, you’ll be able to tell the difference just by the way they feel. Wellfleetian sand is rough and coarse, while sand from Provincetown is round and smoother. The difference is produced by thousands of years of erosion and the dynamics of the coastal environment, says artist and cartographer Mark Adams. Life in Provincetown is all about adaptation and resiliency as well as creativity, culture, and thought for the future. And it’s the subject of a three-day event at the Hawthorne Barn led by Adams and presented by Twenty Summers titled Ecosystems & Imagination, which combines art and science to explore our ever-changing coastal environment.
Provincetown isn’t at a precipice of the effects of erosion, climate change, rising sea levels, and persistent drought, but rather in a vortex as we are responding to these issues in real time as well as planning for what science shows is a future certainty. There are adaptations we can make to change what is not a completely a forgone conclusion. “I don’t want people to think the town won’t be saved, because it will be saved,” says Adams. But it may look very different in the not-so-distant future for a host of reasons. And the more we examine our role in shaping that future, the less scared or helpless we can feel. It just takes a choice and a commitment from the community to create a plan for that future.
“We’re animals of nature in our actions, our decisions at town meeting, in what we use and throw away,” says Adams. “But also there’s what we experience in this remarkable place. We can have a deeper experience of place. Why live here? Why have all the worldly aspects around if it’s not going to bring joy and experience of this place? It’s about thinking and imagination of a deeper connection and a more thoughtful experience with place.”
In 2025 Provincetown completed a coastal resilience plan after a lengthy process involving all aspects of the community. In short, it’s a long-term plan to address sea-level rise, which is forecasted to be up to 51 inches more than now by 2070. That means increased storm surges that the current infrastructure of Provincetown could not handle at all. Commercial Street itself will most likely need to be raised anywhere from 8 to 16 inches in the not-so-distant future. The town will need to build pumps and storm water runoff storage, and both public and private property will need to make changes, as is evident by the number of homes already being raised on stilts. And it’s not just those homes on the water, as flooding models show previously unaffected homes will be in flood plains in 20 to 30 years. The first event of Ecosystems & Imagination is a Resiliency, Futurism and Cape Cod Coastal Geology panel, featuring a variety of scientists who will talk about the knowledge we have for managing erosion, what is being learned about ocean acidification and plastic pollution, and what the Outer Cape can do as small, coastal communities at the mercy of Cape Cod Bay, the Gulf of Maine, and the North Atlantic. The next day, Adams leads a walk along Provincetown Harbor to show exactly what the scientists discussed on the panel, starting at MacMillan Harbor.
The final event is Future Ocean Bohemians, which focuses on human geography in Provincetown. A variety of artists present a multimedia experiences of readings, performances, visual art, music, and science. It explores the cultural response to the natural world and the changes afoot around us. What is now Provincetown is only 6,000 years old, formed by sand from Wellfleet after most of Cape Cod was formed by a glacier and ended at North Truro. The Cape was formed by ground forces, Provincetown by ocean forces, further polishing the sand as it entered the ocean, thus the difference between the two.
Humans have made many alterations to our environment since we arrived in the region “450 grandparents ago,” says Adams. Much of that science and history of the indigenous peoples was passed in the oral tradition and lost when the Europeans arrived “12 generations ago.” In that time choices were made, like closing East Harbor to tidal flow in the 1830s to make a lagoon, in part to prevent Provincetown from becoming an island and more so to make room for a highway and railroad. Even though a five-foot pipe was recently built to let salt water in, it pales in comparison to the quarter-mile cut that used to exist naturally, meaning East Harbor (sometimes still called Pilgrim Lake) is still a troubled body of water, with frequent algae blooms, fish kills, and a lack of species diversity that it should have.
It’s not just the wind and waves changing things in Provincetown, says Adams. There is a “tsunami” of wealth hitting the shores the size of which hasn’t been seen in decades. Provincetown was once the third wealthiest whaling town in America, a brief boom before an enormous bust, quickly followed by major changes in transportation that drained the town’s economic activity further. Then came the Gale of 1898, which practically destroyed the town’s economy and much of its infrastructure. Provincetown was largely abandoned, says Adams, losing significant population and economic interest. In the context of history, little changed for many years. Now, private investment and projects will change the town as has the shift from local ownership to overwhelmingly non-local. Choices matter and human development can be as impactful on the population as any storm or flood.
“I just remember coming here and thinking this is a bohemian town,” says Adams. “But then I realized not everyone who comes here is a bohemian. That they bring city or suburban values with them. If you truly understand a place, you’ll live in harmony with it. What do we build and how to we do it? Do we do it in harmony or do we do it with no thought to the future?”
Twenty Summers presents Ecosystems & Imagination in three events: Resiliency, Futurism and Cape Cod Coastal Geology Panel is on Tuesday, May 12 at 5 p.m. and Future Ocean Bohemians is on Thursday, May 14 at 6 p.m. both at the Hawthorne Barn, 29 Miller Hill Rd., Provincetown. A Provincetown Harbor Walk with Mark Adams is on Wednesday, May 13 beginning at 1:30 p.m. at the Center for Coastal Studies kiosk on MacMillan Pier. A $20 donation is suggested for each. For more information call 508.812.0278 or visit 20summers.org.
