Polpis Road: Strom Winds and Wings
by Frances Kartunen
Proceeding out Polpis Road, after passing the Life-Saving Station and crossing Folger’s Marsh, one comes to a sign on the left side of the road marking the entrance to the University of Massachusetts Field Station. A long driveway leads to a parking area where there are sign-up sheets for visitors. From the parking area walking paths lead uphill and down dale to both freshwater and saltwater environments.
Most of the field station’s buildings are located well above the marsh and the beachfront, but one little building, originally built by Stephen Peabody as a capacious duck blind, is barely above water-level. It was to this harbor-view cottage that Wes Tiffney brought his bride, literature scholar Susan Beegel, after their August wedding in 1983. At the time, resident naturalist Clint Andrews and ornithologist Edith Andrews occupied the field station’s garage apartment on high ground.
Dr. Tiffney, resident director of the field station since 1974, had expanded and winterized the little waterfront building to serve as the station’s main office as well as his snug home. An add-on dining porch with plexiglass windows provided a living area with a view in fair weather and foul. Who could fail to fall in love? After meeting Tiffney at an off-island family wedding in the summer of 1982, Susan made a September visit to the field station, and six weeks later they were engaged.
Things were not to run quite smoothly, however, as their wedding day approached. On April 26, 1983, a remarkable bird showed up at the field station. Edith and Clint Andrews first spotted it, and soon it was identified as a western reef heron, far from its home in western Africa. Since herons cannot land on water, it had apparently been swept up by storm winds and survived its involuntary Atlantic crossing by resting on westward-bound ships or floating debris. Its arrival in Quaise was the first time a western reef heron had been seen in North America.
Birders with telescopes, cameras, and long lenses descended in hordes. Some days more than a hundred visitors registered at the field station. Roger Tory Peterson, dean of American birders, paid a visit. At least one person came from Africa to see the African bird in a New England setting. A birder determined to add the heron to his life list flew in from Colorado, took a taxi from the airport to the field station, saw the bird with his own eyes, and left immediately.
Nerves began to fray as four-wheel-drive vehicles loaded with thousands of dollars worth of optics kept rolling up the driveway. Breakfast on the dining porch had to be taken with birders to the left and right. A woman was suspected of raiding the Andrews melon patch. Asked whether the heron had been seen lately, one student waved a drumstick in the air and said, “We just finished it.”
Wes Tiffney missed a pre-wedding dinner because of the load of visitors but managed to extricate himself in time to get to Maine for the wedding. As for the reef heron, it stayed at the field station until September 13, when it departed in the company of migratory snowy egrets and wasn’t seen again.
Clint Andrews retired in December 1984, and to mark the occasion Susan and Wes invited the many friends of Clint and Edith to a grand potluck dinner. This was the beginning of a cherished Christmas tradition at the field station.
After Clint and Edith moved to Madaket Road, Wes and Susan took their place in the upstairs apartment, and just as well. In the past storm-driven high tides had sometimes lapped the doorstep of the beach house, but the October 1991 No-Name Storm did worse. Susan published her journal of that gale in the Fall 2001 issue of Historic Nantucket. It is an account well worth looking up in the library. On the second day of the storm, she and Wes prepared the beach house for flooding—shutting off the power, taking up rugs, and moving furniture off the porch. The next day, water around the building was knee-deep as they pulled books, paper records, and research material off lower shelves. By the time the storm blew itself out on October 31, the interior of the beach house was soaked, muddy, and bedecked with seaweed, but the building was still standing and salvageable. It continues to function as the field station’s main office.
In 2004, the Nantucket Conservation Foundation signed an agreement to purchase the field station from the University of Massachusetts in order to protect it from potential sale and development. The price was twenty million dollars, and a capital campaign is still underway to pay off the balance. Under an agreement between the NCF and the university, a significant part of the property continues to be operated by the university as the Grace Grossman Environmental Center under year-round resident director Dr. Sarah Oktay. Programs there take place throughout the year, with many community offerings. As ever more visitors take advantage of this on-island “campus,” care is being taken to avoid wear and tear on the land. At present the harbor-front beach is closed to visitors, but a network of walking paths offer spectacular views of the harbor and Nantucket Sound.
There are now ways to visit the field station electronically—a good way to prepare for a first visit and an equally good way to reminisce about a past one. At the field station’s home page www.umb.edu/nantucket there is a welcome with many useful links. The one to “Virtual Tour” takes the visitor on an interpretive trail with eleven stops along the way, each providing information and spectacular visuals. Stop 4 provides a visit to an osprey family, while at Stop 11 one can see snowy egrets in Folger’s Marsh and think back to the summer when they were joined by the reef heron.
While waiting out stormy weather, take a virtual stroll along the field station’s footpaths, and give a thought to supporting the Nantucket Conservation Foundation’s commitment to keeping it free and open for us all. Then, when the sun reappears, head out Polpis Road for the real experience. And remember to walk gently on the land.
Many thanks to Susan Beegel & James Lentowski for help with this column.
Frances Karttunen’s book, The Other Islanders: People Who Pulled Nantucket’s Oars, is available at bookstores and from Spinner Publications, New Bedford. Look for Law and Disorder in Old Nantucket in bookstores this summer.
