It's out there: Top 5 odd things in the Cape Cod woods

I can't stay out of the woods. It's been that way since I was a little kid, building forts and searching for giant rocks. Even finding an old beer bottle was a thrill, as I imagined people of yore slugging down suds and perhaps planning to battle werewolves or Bigfoot. Anything was possible out there!

This peculiar passion continued when I washed ashore in Wellfleet and made Cape Cod my home. It took me a while to get my bearings, but I gradually wrapped my brain around the size of the Cape Cod National Seashore. It isn't just a giant beach. There are 45,000 acres out there, with tiny paths and fire roads and glorious pine/oak forests. And all sorts of mysteries and legends.

So I laced up my sneakers and got going. The Seashore was a great place to start, and then I realized that the entire Cape was full of conservation land and wild places. And sometimes, if I was really lucky, or if someone was kind enough to share a hot tip, I would come across wicked cool stuff.

I used to work with a photographer who loved late autumn on Cape Cod. He liked it when all the leaves had fallen off the trees. I asked why, because it seemed like a slightly depressing time of year. He said when the leaves are down, you can see deep into the woods. And you might see something good.

As we move into the season of deep forest views, it seemed the perfect time to share our top-five list of odd things in the Cape Cod woods.

The Cahoon Canal

In 1852, long before the Cape Cod Canal, a Harwich sea captain with cranberry dreams and a shovel carved out an amazing 200-yard-long super gutter that connected Seymour Pond with Hinckleys Pond in Harwich.

Capt. Alvin Cahoon thought the area around Seymour Pond would be great for cranberry cultivation except for one thing: the water level was about 2 feet too high.

Once the canal was completed in 1853, the water level in Seymour Pond dropped by at least 2 feet, according to a November 1917 article published in Cape Cod Magazine. "After this date cranberry bogs were made along the shore of the pond," states the article. In 2013, Don Bates donated land that includes the canal to the Harwich Conservation Trust.

The Bourne Tunnel

While the mythical Cape Cod Tunnel, which would allow folks to skip the bridges, is a dream for now, there is a very cool tunnel that runs under Route 25 in Bourne. It was built in 1988 as work on that section of road was finishing up. While the tunnel's main purpose is to allow wild animals to safely pass under the busy highway, it's plenty big enough for humans to do it, too.

The Bourne Tunnel is about 200 feet long, and seems plenty big enough to drive a car through. It's pretty dang dark in there as well ― you can barely see the woods on the other end when you start walking through it. I have passed through it twice, and that might be enough for me, but it is a genuine wonder of Cape Cod.

The lone grave of Thomas Ridley

Back in 1883, historian Shebnah Rich described the site in his book “Truro-Cape Cod or Land Marks and Sea Marks.” He wrote: “Near a dismal swamp, with not a habitation in sight or sound, with not a tree or rock or post or sign of life, where the hills rest tier on tier ... is the solitary grave of Thomas Ridley, who died of small-pox, 1776."

If there's a lost world on Cape Cod, it's the woods around Ridley's grave. It sits in a tract of pine and oak wilderness, roughly 600 acres or so, south of the Pilgrim Heights area in North Truro. It took me quite a while to find it, and I go back every now and then to pay my respects. It is a very lonely place.

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Ruins of Peaked Hill Bars Coast Guard Station

Here's the scoop from the Aug. 7, 1958, edition of the Provincetown Advocate: "Another famed Provincetown landmark was swept away on Sunday night, when the old Peaked Hill Bars Coast Guard Station went up in flames...the violent torch that angrily spat thousands of feather-like red-orange flames against the summer sky, brought back the legends of the old station that will live forever."

According to an Aug. 4, 1958, Cape Cod Standard Times story, the "spectacular" fire that consumed the station "could be seen as far away as Plymouth." Now the ruins slumber in a remote part of the Province Lands, nestled in the pines and dunes, tattooed with graffiti.

The Lost Car of Quincy

Did you ever park your car somewhere and forget where it was for a few decades? Well, something of the sort seems to have played out in the woods of North Truro. Cape Cod National Seashore staff encountered the ancient Ford sedan about a mile southeast of the Pilgrim Heights area about 2003.

Adding intrigue to the auto mystery, the words "City of Quincy Engineering Dept." are visible on the passenger door. A bit of sleuthing raised a possible connection between a former Quincy employee who vacationed in North Truro in the late 1940s and 1950s and may have taken his family blueberry picking in the area, but the details seem to be lost to history.

When told about the car back in 2011, Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch couldn't resist wheeling out some humor on the topic. "Perhaps I'll have our mechanic look into it to see if we can use it for parts," he quipped.

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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Cape Cod top 5 odd things to find in the woods