Our English word “haven” derives from the Germanic word “Hafen” for a harbor, and historically Woods Hole was settled and developed as a haven, a safe harbor, for ships and smaller craft. Over the past century and a half, Woods Hole has also become a haven for science, particularly for doing science:, whether expanding and refining our current science through research or applying scientific knowledge to understand and solve societal problems. The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) set up shop here in 1885 as a research laboratory for the Fish Commission under the U.S. Department of Commerce, the predecessor of today’s NOAA Fisheries agency. On this visit, only MBL’s Pierce Center, on Water Street below the drawbridge, was open to visitors. It’s a must-stop if you want to know what makes Woods Hole tick.

(Left) Eel Pond seen from the drawbridge that opens to let boats enter or leave this safe harbor, or “hole.” Surrounding Eel Pond on three sides are buildings used by MBL, WHOI, or NOAA Fisheries. (Right) Exhibits at the Pierce Center include this axolotl, a Mexican salamander that is being studied for its ability to regenerate inner organs as well as any of its limbs. The aim is to learn more about organ and limb regeneration processes that can help human healthcare.

Intermingled with the MBL buildings within the village are laboratories and working offices of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). Founded in 1930, WHOI resulted from recommendations of a National Academy of Sciences study committee on oceanography, led by then-director of MBL, Frank Lillie. Initial operations, including construction of a research vessel and buildings for offices and research, were funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. During World War II, the U.S. Navy became a major sponsor, and after the National Science Foundation (NSF) was established by Congress in 1950, NSF became a second major sponsor. Along with all its ocean exploration and research conducted from surface ships, WHOI pioneered and continues to advance the technology for and scientific application of deep-diving manned and unmanned undersea vehicles. In 1985, WHOI teamed with the French National Institute of Oceanography in the successful search for the wreck of the R.M.S. Titanic. That effort brought a surge of fame, but more important to paradigm-changing scientific work has been WHOI’s role in exploring and sampling deep-ocean hydrothermal vents. Education is a major pillar of WHOI’s mission; its early programs of summer internships evolved by 1968 into a Joint Program in Oceanography with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, training and providing research opportunities for new generations of ocean-oriented scientists.

A close-up photo of a colony of tube worms living on the side of a hydrothermal vent more than 2 miles deep in the ocean. Photos and video clips of deep-ocean exploration, the wreckage of the Titanic, and much more from WHOI expeditions can be experienced at the Discovery Center on School Street.

Jennifer’s favorite science building in the village is the Woods Hole Science Aquarium maintained by NOAA Fisheries. It’s the oldest public aquarium in the nation, though it unfortunately was closed due to COVID-19 restrictions on this visit. What Jennifer loves the most is being able to wander among the tanks and peer in, close up, at the specimens kept here for marine biological studies in support of maintaining sustainable fisheries and healthy marine ecosystems.

For my part, I first came to Woods Hole in the summer of 1991, not for any of its ocean-oriented science institutions but as a new employee of a fourth science-based institution, the National Research Council (NRC) of what is now called the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. During the 5 years I was on the NRC staff, I came to Woods Hole 3 or 4 times a year to participate in conferences and study committee meetings held at the Jonsson Center, a conference and event venue owned by the National Academies and located at Quissett Harbor, a mile or so north of the village. After I returned to free-lance technical writing, I continued to visit Woods Hole at least once a year for another decade, to help NRC study committees develop their reports or to write the summary of board meetings. On most of these visits, I stayed at the Sands of Time Motor Inn, a couple hundred yards above the village, where Jennifer and I stayed once more on this visit. We were delighted that, unlike our honeymoon B n B in Wellfleet, the Sands of Time has kept all its charm while upgrading its facilities and room furnishings. And on most of my working visits, I had at least one delicious seafood meal at the Fishmongers Café, on Water Street just before the drawbridge. Jennifer and I ate in that same building again on this trip, though it now houses a higher-end restaurant, the Water Street Kitchen.

(Left) The Sands of Time Motor Lodge sign along the Falmouth Road, seen from the balcony of our room. (Right) View from the drawbridge of the former Fishmongers Café, now Water Street Kitchen.

As we departed from the Sands of Time and Woods Hole, Jennifer and I drove out to the Jonsson Center (now for sale) long enough to take a photo of the main house, where I had eaten many meals and worked on many NRC reports. And I saw, one more time, the carriage house in whose large conference room I was covering a meeting for the Board on Army Science and Technology on September 11, 2001. That morning, the meeting agenda was interrupted as the retired Army officers on the board received urgent messages about the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. An unusual quiet came over that group, and I could feel the tension of military leaders preparing once more to take on a hostile force while still fearing what might have befallen their comrades, friends, and family in harm’s way.

The main house (left) and the carriage house (right) at the National Academies’ Jonsson Center.

I thought about that fateful morning and all my other visits to Woods Hole as Jennifer and I walked along the Shining Sea bike path—built on the bed of the old railroad that once ran to Woods Hole and where Katherine Lee Bates found inspiration for the “sea to shining sea” line in her poem, “Ámerica the Beautiful.” I remembered my early-morning or evening runs on that bike path, 3 miles to the Falmouth road and back, to prepare for or relax from a day’s work at the center. Even though Heraclitus was right in some sense and there have been changes even here in Woods Hole, at least I can still relive the times I had on these slowly shifting sands.

Heraclitus of Ephesus, a Greek philosopher who lived a century before Socrates, said, “No man can step in the same river twice.” One interpretation of this epithet (he was called “Heraclitus the Obscure”) is that a river constantly flows and changes—so the water you step into the second time is not the same water you stepped into before. Another fragment from Heraclitus is “Everything flows.”

If Heraclitus had been with Jennifer and me on this visit to the Cape Cod National Seashore, nine years after our previous visit, he might have said, “See, I told you, you can’t walk the same seashore twice.” The tides wash up and down, shifting sand and stones, subtly resculpting the intertidal zone every day. Seasonal storms blast the dune cliffs with waves, rain, and wind. The Atlantic Ocean constantly eats away at the sandy land that stands against her here. The last fragments of concrete footings from Marconi’s trans-Atlantic wireless station to England are perilously close to falling off the dune’s edge and tumbling onto the sandy beach below. Everything flows.

The sandy dune cliffs rising above the Cape Cod National Seashore seem imposing to a human, but the Atlantic in its wilder tantrums rips away at them, spilling their substance onto the beaches, then flowing their sand southward as the chain of barrier islands stretching to Florida.

(Left) Stranded ocean jellies (formerly called “jellyfish”) punctuate the pattern of rivulets etched in the beach sand by the outgoing tide. (Right) In the salt ponds forming the shore near Eastham, ocean and land seem at peace, mingling in a ying-yang of an important, complex, and productive ecosystem—if only human enterprise can stop interfering.

This was my fifth visit to this National Park seashore. On each return, much has been familiar, remembered. But there have also been many differences. Perhaps I’m noticing things I don’t remember; perhaps the seashore has changed from visit to visit. Perhaps even my memories are changing as I age. Everything flows, including me and my sense of self.

When Jennifer and I hatched the idea for this trip, the key goal was to revisit the B ‘n B–style inn in Wellfleet on Cape Cod where we stayed on our honeymoon in 2012. Via the web, I learned that the inn had been sold to new owners a couple years after our visit. I located the room that looked most like the room in which we had stayed and requested to reserve it. The reservation was confirmed; we thought we would be stepping back into that same memorable location, changed only by some upgrading of décor and furnishings by the new owners. Time is cruel. We arrived to find that our “contactless check-in” directed us to a different room than the one requested. With much texting and calling, we did manage to get moved to our requested room for the second night of our stay. Both rooms were smaller than we remembered, less accommodating than the hotel/motel rooms we had been staying in previously on this trip. The anticipated upgrade of the facility turned out to be superficial at best. And then the do-it-yourself coffee in the communal kitchen ran out on the second morning. Everything flows, and sometimes the flow is downhill.

The old inn at the entrance to the town of Wellfleet, now a B n B, where Jennifer and I stayed on our honeymoon in 2012 and tried to revisit on this trip

Once before this trip I visited Longwood Gardens—in 2008 with my mother and kid brother (the kid who is now 63) on what would be her last trip back from Florida to the Hudson Valley, where I grew up. Mom needed a wheelchair on that visit, so we stayed on paved paths with easy grades and no stairs. We first turned east to the Flower Garden Walk as far as the Italian Water Garden, then headed west to the Conservatory, the Main Fountain Garden, Topiary and Rose Gardens, and the manicured, tree-shaded hillside planting beds surrounding the Chimes Tower.

Jennifer and I visited those areas of Longwood on this trip as well, but we added two areas inaccessible by wheelchair, which I had not seen on that first trip. From the Italian Water Garden, we climbed a path through Peirce’s Wood, heading for the Meadow Garden. From a hillside overlooking the meadow, we could scan its entire expanse.

Descending into the meadow, we walked a mowed pathway to where meadow met forest, then traced along the forest-meadow boundary until we entered the main part of Peirce’s Wood. Meadow and wood were a native, natural, unconstrained though not quite wild, complement to the manicured, Old World gardens and imposing Conservatory building, with its human-dependent displays of tropical and subtropical plants and trees.  They brought me back to the fields and forests of my youth.

Smartphone technology enabled another mind-bending change from my first visit. Along the wooded pathway to the meadow, I used PictureThis, a plant identification app on my iPhone, to ID native plants that may work in our own yard. I could quickly find not just the name of a flower, shrub, or tree in any of the gardens but also check on its provenance—was it native or from a foreign land?—and it’s potential suitability for growing in our own little greenspace at home. I discovered how different it is to view a planting as a potential for one’s own endeavor and not just as a visual experience of the moment.

Based on my first visit, I thought 3 hours would more than suffice for a visit to Longwood Gardens. After more than 6 hours on this visit, I left feeling I needed to come back—at least once more—just to catch what I knew I had missed.

Our driving tour into the Northeast takes me back to lands where I was born, where I grew up and came of age. And during four decades of work as a technical writer living near Washington, D.C., I journeyed back here to report on meetings and conferences. These lands—the river valleys and rolling Appalachian hills, the cities and town and blue highways—are familiar. And yet I know time has changed these places from what I once knew, as time has also changed me.

So, in my blog posts on this trip, I’ll try to capture both a sense of these places as I remember them and my reactions to their “here and now.” And being me, I’ll probably be reflecting as well on what the inevitable differences between past and present portend.

In her first blog on this trip, Jennifer limns our itinerary. Check that out, if you made the mistake of starting with my post first, and settle back for a two-perspective tour of the land of the yankees.