The beach as public forum
What Wollaston Beach means to Quincy, flower of the week, and more
Growing up far inland, I’ve always understood beaches as magical, far-off places glimpsed for short periods of time. Adjusting to a beach being a 20-minute walk away has been a long process. In a good way, Wollaston Beach and Quincy Bay still seem wondrous. It’s caught in a strange place between the ordinary and the strange for me right now.
However, for Quincy and the South Shore, Wollaston Beach is familiar ground. In fact, in this densely developed area, it serves many of the same functions as a central park or town square do in other cities. During the pandemic, it has been important as a place where people can spread out and get some fresh air. Throughout the era of social distancing, one woman has been getting up at 6 a.m. to lead dance classes at the beach to help people “find unexpected joy.”
After George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were murdered by the police, antiracist people in Quincy gathered at Wollaston Beach across from the Clam Box for a vigil for Black lives. Quincy Shore Drive is a fast and busy road that borders the beach, which is usually a drawback as a pedestrian, but in this case it helped us draw attention to our cause and grow our numbers.
When pro-law enforcement groups held a rally “in response” to us protesting the police murders of Black people, that too happened at the beach — and the mayor showed up and spoke in support as well, just to make extra clear that he doesn’t think the institution of policing should be changed in the slightest. (When a Quincy resident sent him a copy of Ibram Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist, he sent her a Catholic edition of the Bible in return, believing that the resident was just calling him a racist.)
Meanwhile, Wollaston continued to be an ecosystem and a natural area vital to the well-being of many in the community. The Black Lives Matter vigil happened near a piping plover nest. The species is listed as threatened in Massachusetts and endangered federally. Wildlife biologists had roped the nesting area off, and the plovers raised young a few yards away from beachgoers, the Clam Box, and occasional protests. As far as I know, there was one successfully fledged juvenile plover.
While not as pristine as farther-off beaches like Plum Island or Duxbury, Wollaston is essential to its community. The presence of the piping plovers suggests that it could be both public space and support declining wildlife. Least terns forage in the bay. Uncommon gulls and shorebirds stop here during migration. It’s nice to imagine a future where birds like piping plovers are again common and share space successfully with people every year as they do in other beaches. People are a part of their ecosystem. It’s a matter of finding sustainable ways to live within the ecosystem rather than removing ourselves from the picture.
Yesterday, we once again contended over Wollaston Beach. A far-right group called “Back the Blue” staged a rally with oversized Thin Blue Line flags, a symbol that portrays the police as struggling against a violent and lawless public—in short, a symbol of fascism. Almost none of the Back the Blue people wore masks. We gathered and counter-protested, shrinking the amount of space the far-right activists could take up, covering up their noise with our own. We said that Black lives matter and that good cops quit. With greater numbers, greater noise and a better cause, we tried to make Wollaston a place where everyone is welcome but hateful views are not.
For me, the value of Wollaston to wildlife goes hand-in-hand with its importance as a space for people. They can’t be separated. It’s a different way of relating to a beach for me, but I’m getting used to it.
Flower of the week: Seaside goldenrod
The goldenrod genus Solidago contains about 120 species, and in North America you’re essentially guaranteed to find a few goldenrods adapted to your region. In Nebraska I spent hours in close company with Canada, Missouri, giant, and rigid goldenrods, typical grassland species. In Quincy, seaside goldenrod (Solidago sempervirens) has become a familiar sight for me in salt marshes, beaches, and here in a natural area at the end of Squantum peninsula. It’s readily recognizable for its tightly-packed leaves and flowers and its late blooming time (well into October.) It resists salt spray as well as deer. It grows from Newfoundland to Mexico as well as the Great Lakes, with lots of genetic variation and differences in appearance throughout the range.
I wanted to pass on something you may already know but that I was confused about until recently (apologies to anyone I’ve misled!) I thought that goldenrod pollen was a source for fall allergies (hitting pretty hard right now) along with ragweed and other wind-pollinated flowers. It turns out that goldenrod pollen is generally too heavy to blow around in the wind and travel up our sinuses, and it’s largely the less-showy ragweed that’s to blame. Goldenrods mostly rely on insect pollination, not wind.
Have 11 minutes to spare?
Emergence Magazine produced a stunning 11-minute film about Colleen Cooley, a Diné (Navajo) river guide talking about what the water and land mean to her as a Native person. “Before Park Service, before BLM [Bureau of Land Management] ... before any of the boundaries including the Navajo Nation, all of it was Indigenous land. It’s not just a playground. It’s healing for me and I hope that other people can feel that as well,” she reflects. Interacting with places as more than “a playground” but instead as places to which we have an ethical responsibility is an essential message for non-Native people like me.
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Possum Notes is a weekly newsletter about wildlife and landscapes around where I live. It’s produced on occupied Massachusett and Wampanoag land.