Month

I've been thinking a lot about the Pilgrims lately, and not because as I write this it's a few days after Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving represents abundance, yet my thoughts concerning these first New England immigrants have been more about scarcity and how they dealt with it.

Coming to the New World was always a risky venture for them, and to make matters worse, when they arrived, they were not where they expected to be, the mouth of the Hudson River, where the weather was more temperate and soil more fertile.

You need only step into Provincetown Harbor in November, where they waded ashore for the first time, or stand for few moments in the winter wind off Plymouth Bay to imagine their dismay at the miscalculation that had brought them there.

Despite the fact that he had misgivings about the Pilgrims at first (he thought they were kooks), Christopher Jones, skipper of the Mayflower, had come to respect his pious passengers, so much so that he delayed his departure as long as he could.

But on April 5, 1621, almost six months after it arrived, the Mayflower sailed for England, There is a local cafe which has a painting of this moment hanging on the wall. It shows the citizens of the newly founded colony of Plymouth watching the Mayflower leave, taking with it any possibility of going back to the life they had previously known. From now on, they would be alone in a world full of uncertainty and peril, which also offered, if they persevered, the possibility of creating a better life.