Rose Nulman Park is actually the reason I began this entire project. In January of 2022, I learned through a town Facebook group that the park was going to be closed to the public effective immediately due to extreme erosion of the park’s coastally-facing edge. 

 

I used to come here at least twice a month with my father - another coastal native, but of the Antrim Coast in Northern Ireland, not here. And yet, I think my father has grown to love Rhode Island’s coastal environment just as much as the one he came from. In fact, I think that Rose Nulman’s (and all of Point Judith’s) sheerly dropped coastline, craggy rocks, horseshoe crabs, and slightly bleak appearance (especially in winter) are somewhat reminiscent of our Irish heritage seascapes. Perhaps that’s why he brought us here so much. 

 

Thus, my personal connection to the soundscape of this park is a deeply nostalgic one. As I have come to realize that each beach has a truly distinct sonic identity, I formed emotional associations of memory with each one. While that isn’t a necessary element of engagement with this project, I think that it will resonate with other natives of our coastal communities, who probably also formed deep but likely tacit emotional connections with their own sonic environments - without ever realizing that they’d done it. 

 

While Rose Nulman is accessible on foot, the fact of its imminent erasure is everywhere. The parking lot is closed, and the fence that previously lined the cliff’s edge is half-dropped onto the rocks below and into the sea. The loss of this area isn’t just limited to climate change, however, as the part of the beach that I visited most as a child is now the property of Homeland Security and so completely inaccessible. That these places will change is inevitable with the passage of time, especially where human involvement is concerned, but it is the imminent threat of disappearance due to climate change that really puts these soundscapes at urgent risk.