Your share of the shoreline
Who will save Rockport's Atlantic Path?
Here’s a thought exercise. You’ve just bought a prime oceanfront property on the north shore of Massachusetts (you’re rich) but there’s a catch. Some mornings, when you just want to sit alone on your deck, stare at the whitecaps of Davy Jones’ Locker, and mournfully ruminate about Proustian memories from a lost childhood, there are other people in your peripheral vision. They’re hiking along a path that runs past your house—a coastal trail through rocks and rosa rugosa bushes that skirts backyards and is open to the public. The presence of these hikers disrupts your maritime brooding.
So….do you let them be? Or do you try and get the coastal path shut down?
I’d like to think that most of us would choose the first option, happily or begrudgingly. But in the quiet north shore town of Rockport, Mass., a beloved piece of recreational infrastructure is in serious danger of being partially closed off to the general public.
The endangered gem is the Atlantic Path, a dreamlike little trail that wanders north from Pigeon Cove to Andrew’s Woods along Rockport’s craggy shores. Boston Globe staff reporter Billy Baker recently wrote a fascinating story about the history of the public path, which runs across the edge of private properties thanks to an 1887 state provision that preserves public access to the coastal rocks and ledges here. In a state where almost 90% of the coastline is privatized and inaccessible to the unwashed masses, the Atlantic Path is kind of a miracle. For decades, Atlantic Path hikers and the adjacent homeowners have led a peaceful coexistence. (The path can be reached by tiny spur trails that run between residents’ houses and nearby streets.) But today, a lawyer who lives along the path at Andrews Point is attempting to torpedo that truce.
This lawyer, whom I’m not going to name for reasons that you’ll soon understand, has sued the Town of Rockport and the state, on the premise that all of the people who use the Atlantic Path for hiking, fishing, dog-walking and birding are making her feel like “a stranger in her own home.” The goal seems straightforward: strong-arm the town or the state into closing off the Andrew’s Point portion of the Atlantic Path. And while this lawyer is something of an outlier among Rockport residents (several of whom are really pissed off about this) her legal campaign does reflect a serious vulnerability of public paths that run across private property. As Baker explains in his Globe story, these paths can be ruined by rich homeowners who have too much time and money on their hands, because the towns often lack the resources to fight back.
A few years ago, a portion of the Atlantic Path near Phillips Avenue was relocated from the coastal ledges to the rocks below, when a homeowner complained that the path was worsening the erosion around their stone wall. Rockport residents continued to use the original path until one day, a few hikers ran into newly-installed bushes that forced a diversion down to the rocks. The town didn’t investigate this development, and the mostly-gentle path now includes a detour that requires scrambling across uneven, stony surfaces that can get quite slippery. All it took was one homeowner to compromise the integrity of the Atlantic Path. And if the lawyer at Andrews Point has her way, history could soon repeat itself, further disfiguring the path’s original route.
All of which is a roundabout way of saying that right after reading Billy Baker’s story about the Atlantic Path, I knew that I had to get to Rockport and check this thing out.
While I still could.
Due to its unique nature as a public path across mostly private properties, the Atlantic Path is kind of tricky to locate if you’re searching for maps and trail information. But thanks to the Friends of Andrews Woods, I was able to find an aerial view of the trail route before hitting the road for Rockport on a broiling morning in late June. (Maps for trails like the Atlantic Path are pretty important, so that you can avoid wandering into someone’s backyard.) The trail heads north from Cathedral Avenue, in the shadow of an oceanside inn called The Emerson, and you have two access options. You can drive to Rockport, park on Curtis Street, and walk a short distance to the trailhead. Or you can take the MBTA commuter rail to the Rockport train station and walk to the Atlantic Path from there via Granite Street. (1.8 miles each way, with regular sidewalk.)
The Atlantic Path’s south trailhead actually shows up on Google Maps as a location, and when I arrived there, liberally coated in sunblock (sun + a reflective ocean = extra crispy), I immediately detected signs of public trail use and affection. The path sets off through an opening in a stone wall, atop which you’ll find two bunny statues that are currently sporting stars-and-spangles bow-ties. A nearby metal sign that reads “Public Foot Path” and a thin dirt path disappears into bushes, tall grass, and rocks of the Rockport shoreline. The waves were crashing, the wind was keeping the bugs away, and I was ready to court danger. So I set off, heading north to Andrew’s Point.
It only took three minutes for the initial serenity of the path to be disrupted by some elemental challenges, which may or may not have been deliberately cultivated. First, I emerged from a grove of vegetation to find that a clear-cut section of the Atlantic Path had been partially flooded. I squelched across the sodden lawn, using some stepping stones to avoid total footwear saturation. But in the next corridor of plants, I found something that made me smile: a hiker “rest area” where one of the adjacent homeowners had demarcated a shady little oasis amid twisted trees and flowers.
The milk of human kindness was sweet but short-lived, as the path soon led me to a spot where I was required to pick my way down a steep, eroded drop-off onto the seaside rocks below the grassier ledges. As much as I enjoyed the next 20 minutes of hopping from rock to rock and scaling slabbier areas of stone that resembled a pile of tortillas, this was a decidedly different experience than walking along the earlier, more level pathway: an experience that would be out of reach for hikers with mobility limitations, balance issues, etc. Blue arrows painted on the rocks showed me the way, only to disappear later. Once again, I wondered: Did this happen naturally?
As the trail returned to the greener ledge for a while, I checked my map and realized that I was getting close to Andrews Point: the ornery lawyer’s turf! My entrance to the forbidden zone kicked off with a red, angry-looking “PRIVATE PROPERTY” sign that instructed Atlantic Path users to “keep moving.” This was easier said than done, as the trail now entered a jumble of loose boulders—some of which required two hands to monkey over. As I picked my way through the rocks, I looked to my left toward the large houses that abutted the path. I instantly recognized the lawyer’s coastal citadel from a photo that ran with the Globe story, and to my relief, the deck looked empty.
As I kept scrambling along the trail, I imagined my movements being tracked through a set of binoculars from the second floor window. (If I lived in any other state, I might have imagined a rifle scope instead.) Knowing that my presence here was unwanted but protected by the law added a bit of a thrill to the hike. But when I took a rest atop one of the boulders, I found it hard to relax and take in the killer view of the Atlantic. So I kept moving, aiming for the relative safe harbor of Alan’s Beach, just up ahead.
After schlepping my way over the final rock jumble and arriving there, I was greeted by two women walking their dogs in the direction of Andrews Point. We exchanged pleasantries and commented on the high humidity. There was no way the dogs could have handled the boulders along the point, so the women veered right and headed inland toward Phillips Avenue, on one of the spur paths that offers access to the Atlantic Path. I sat down on a trailside bench, took a couple of minutes to admire the stony little cove that formed a raggedy beach, and decided to begin my own return journey. I was tempted to continue to Andrews Woods, but between the heat, the terrain I had navigated, and the creeping sensation of being monitored, I was beat.
Backtracking toward Curtis Street, where I had parked, I expected to spend the walk stewing about how the misanthropic whims of one crabby property owner can spoil something for everyone else. But on several lawns along the road, I noticed blue signs that read “SAVE THE ATLANTIC PATH.” These signs were a crucial reminder that for all the land-grabbing lawyers and their counterparts, there are a lot of other people who believe in the notion of common good: even when it nudges up against their property lines. And if our legal system fails to uphold common goods like the Atlantic Path—which it may—I think we can expect those people people to respond by continuing to walk the path, regardless of local laws or physical obstructions. The path has survived this long because it speaks to something inside many of us: something that just feels right. No level of wealth or leverage can scrub that out of our shared consciousness.
The Atlantic Path
Hike distance: 2-ish mile loop
Elevation gain: Less than 50 feet
CLICK HERE for a trail map
It’s Beach Read Season and since I’m #26 on the Boston Public Library waitlist for TJ Newman’s Drowning (a plane crashes into the Pacific, sinks 200 feet, and teeters on the edge of an undersea cliff!!!) I’ve been availing myself of overlooked thrillers. Upon the recommendation of a fellow writer, I picked up The White Road, by Sarah Lotz, which belongs to the uber-niche “polar thriller/horror” genre. The premise: an outdoor adventure influencer barely escapes death on an ill-conceived spelunking trip, and tries to recover by climbing Mount Everest (just go with it.) But something from the cave—something even more malignant than trauma—may have followed him to the slopes of the world’s tallest peak. Suffice it to say, I’m loving this, and I’d also love to know if anyone here has any recommendations for thrillers that make use of outdoor settings. It’s an under-utilized subgenre of the thriller market, and I have a bottomless appetite. Also, Lotz’s most recent book, The Impossible (a more romantic adventure) is being adapted into a movie by Sian Heder, the director of CODA, so you might as well get in on the action and pick up one of Lotz’s books today, before she blows up.