Outdoors

Take a beachcombing day to treasure hunt

BY JURA KONCIUS

The Washington Post

The late April sun is still warm and there’s a salty tang in the air as Gail Browne heads down the narrow streets of Provincetown, Mass., to the harbor beach she has combed for 50 years. She approaches the shoreline an hour before low tide, the time seasoned beachcombers know is best for scanning around seaweed, rocks and shells for a glint of man-made treasures. Gulls screech and contractors’ drills ready antique cottages for the season.

Browne heads under the wharves to search the sand for bits of the history of this town, which was founded in 1727 at the tip of Cape Cod. The thousands of relics she has uncovered are a portal into the past: 1700s English transferware shards, fishermen’s pipes, 19th-century clay marbles, a bronze oil lamp. These pieces of strangers’ homes and lives also artfully fill shelves, tables and windowsills in her nearby townhouse, reflecting her own memories and stories.

“I have an obsession,” says Browne, 74. “When I’m walking on the beach, I just can’t take my eyes off the ground.”

Browne is one of many artists and collectors who have succumbed to the lure of the sands in Provincetown. The quaint and quirky fisherman’s village is a summer resort and a world famous art colony where generations of painters have come to capture the elusive Cape Cod light. She and her friend Amy Heller, a fellow artist who has been combing the beaches since she was a child, are inspired in their work by the natural beauty of Cape Cod as well as the treasures they uncover on its beaches, then display in their homes. The two women collaborated on a 2020 book that shares their beachcombing experiences as well as those of four other artist-collectors: “Lost and Found: Time, Tide, and Treasures.” And last October, the Cape Cod Museum of Art staged an exhibition about them.

There is a reason the sands here are choice beachcombing territory: Provincetown’s harbor basically served as the town dump until the 1930s. “Everyone threw their junk into the harbor. It was pretty nasty,” Browne says. “It all settled down, and what didn’t rot stayed behind and got covered up. Tides and wind shift it, and that uncovers it.” Because of Provincetown’s years as a major whaling and fishing center, the jumble of sunken bits and pieces that have been churned up amount to a rich soup that tells the story of the town.

The relics are beautiful on their own. But when massed into bowls or jars, or displayed on shelves, the objects and their timeworn patina create a focal point in a room, and a history lesson for anyone who will listen. How many of us have brought home a shell or a piece of sea glass that triggers memories of a day by the water? (It’s always a good idea to check local beach collection rules surrounding what you can gather on public lands, according to Leslie Reynolds, deputy superintendent of the Cape Cod National Seashore.)

The laid-back vibe of collecting things from the sand has a long history. “Ever since people have been walking the shore of oceans, seas, lakes and rivers, they have been picking stuff up,” says Kirsti Scott, editor and publisher of the five-year-old magazine Beachcombing. But there has been a growing interest in the topic, Scott says, since the rise of social media, which allowed combers to connect with other master foragers. Also during the pandemic, people who were tired of being stuck indoors flocked to beaches, and more got hooked on trawling for treasures.

Festivals around the country, such as the Eastern Shore Sea Glass & Coastal Arts Festival in St. Michaels and the Sanibel Shell Show in Florida, can attract thousands of attendees. The Beachcombing Center, which opened last year on Tilghman Island in the Chesapeake Bay, is an international museum of sea glass, fossils and shipwreck finds, and part of its mission is to raise awareness about coastal erosion and marine debris, according to executive director Mary McCarthy.

Photos by Rick Friedman Artist Gail Browne on the shore in Provincetown, Mass. “I have an obsession,” says Browne, 74. “When I’m walking on the beach, I just can’t take my eyes off the ground.”

Amy Heller has been combing the beaches in Provincetown since she was a child. Here, she holds a particularly treasured piece: a Victorian doll’s leg.

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