I've been hanging around after dark at Plimoth Plantation recently. Sounds odd, I know.

Daylight Savings started on November 6, pulling evenings in. The Massachusetts museum that portrays life in 1628—now known as Plimoth Patuxet—closes for the year at the end of November. So for three weeks, guests are in the dark for the last hour of the day.

The museum came up with a creative solution: make a feature of experiencing the museum by candle and firelight.

My daughter and I have been several times in the past few weeks. It was magical. We lingered and talked with the re-enactors, and though fully aware this is a fiction perhaps not altogether accurate, went away considering what November in early New England would have been like.

The English Village at Plimoth Patuxet, at the close of a short November day

Slipping through time with the help of candlelight and actors to 1621

Sketching History

My last homeschooled student Abigail, and I are traveling about Massachusetts visiting historic sites, and sketching what we find. We had sketched our way around London and Norfolk, England on a visit last year and each filled an entire sketchbook in a concentrated manner. We enjoyed the process so much, we thought why not make it a year-long attempt locally? History by Field Trip.

So, this fall, we've lugged our hefty A4 sketchbooks about various early American history sites in Massachusetts, and our focus in November was the town of Plymouth.

Fitting It In

The best part, for me, about sketching is that it nearly always seems impossible.

But doing it makes all the difference.

In between Abigail’s outside classes in lab, literature, and Latin, we go, we arrive, and we settle in—open to a blank page, while still in the car, pull out a pen and begin simply with the date, place, perhaps the weather. I nearly always don’t feel like sketching, in public. This helps.

There. It’s not a blank page any longer and we know once at the site we’ll find something to record.

First, Mayflower II

On our first trip down there, my daughter cracked open the pages of Nathaniel Philbrick’s, Mayflower as we drove and read aloud the original and the updated Prefaces.

These were a series of stunning cliffhangers to make you salivate over reading the book. As Abigail read the last sentence, we pulled around the corner to the harbor where Mayflower II is docked. There it was! The boat we had just clung to as it made its harrowing crossing in 1957. It was a great literary entrance.

I sat, still vibrating with South Shore traffic from the hour’s drive from Boston, and stared at the harbor. It had been hard to get away.

Snow was threatening. We were parked facing the water. The clouds fell away in layers to the horizon. A tiny red lighthouse far out flicked into and out of the brief sunlight as light broke through.

“If I had a good camera, I’d photograph that lighthouse way out there,” I said.

“Well, I could sketch it,” I considered, remembering with surprise that of course, a drawing was possible. “Okay, if I had the energy, I’d sketch that scene. But we’re short on time and should get to the boat.”

My tired thinking shifted. “Oh, hang it, I will sketch it.”

All the traffic fell away as I fell into the scene, and when I did walk the quarter mile to the boat (and pay the enormous ticket price—good til the end of the season for repeat visits!) I was ready to enter into the occasion.

Some Realities

Sketching while on a field trip has some specific restraints.

It takes a sort of interruptive extra dose of energy to crack open a sketchbook while there.

“One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.”

— Abraham Maslow

Also, it is tricky to sketch if a place is only accessible through a guided tour.

We simply could not hold up the group at the National Park properties associated with President John Adams. We were tightly shuffled from room to room, through the three buildings of the tour.

On the also closely watched tour of the Jason Russell House in Arlington, MA—site of the bloodiest fighting of the first day of the American Revolution—my daughter did jot down a tiny sketch of a rag rug noting what was written on the label—something that had caught her attention. The guide was powerless to stop her drawing with all the shuffling in the world.

But mostly, no lingering or loitering. Most of our sketches have been of exteriors, gardens, outdoor things.

Resilient Wonder Sketching

These pages are a grab bag of noticings while there. Raw unfinished visual thoughts to ponder. A venue for questions and a later place to record answers.

A means to focus attention.

We try not to draw the same things. Abigail likes to capture a variety of small sketches across the page. I find myself falling into full-page double spreads that I wonder how to get myself out of. “What have I got myself into?”

It’s a continual learning curve: learning to sketch as we learn more of history. An imperfect journey that’s more about the attempt.

With each field trip, new ways to use our sketchbooks occur to us:

botanical sketches or samples
brochures
quotes from primary sources read later
answers to questions we asked on site
other research

Despite the squeezed-in moments, we always come away built up and with a measure of wonder at the time spent looking, listening, and noticing. And as the pages accumulate, they are becoming more than the sum of their parts.

A Second Visit to Plimoth

On our second visit, I really aimed to draw. Though I also thoroughly enjoyed taking pictures.

Inside a Wampanoag wetu, or winter house. Abigail adds a sketch of a skunk pelt to her scavenged page of images that evoke the visit.

A few minutes sketching swan’s neck gourds and deer hide at the entrance of the wetu. My husband said he liked the *pear* drawings. :-) I since bought a gourd that looks just like these so I can add its lovely mottled brown surface, like a russet apple. I’ll add it in colored pencil.

Large A4-sized double spread, drawn on a chilly November late afternoon, in two colors of Prismacolor: greyed lavender and black grape. An underdrawing to be continued at home? Click to see full screen.

Words to a song we sang as a round, about 12 of us with some of the actors, by the fire in one of the houses. I scribbled the words down in the dark.

A 5 min graphite sketch right before the museum closed. I love the story behind Bartmann jugs. I plan to type up and paste on the opposite A4 page, the hilarious story behind this face embedded on the neck of the jar, and my experience finding fragments of a Bartmann while mudlarking on the Thames.

Really After-Hours at Plimoth

Next week we’re going back to Plimoth Patuxet even though it will be closed for the season.

They have a class for homeschoolers, held in several of the 1621 houses, to experience cooking over an open hearth. Rather than an abundance of cooking, I’m hoping to sneak in detailed indoor sketching.

The gift of time to stand and stare.