Author: janpriddyoregon

TREADING LIGHTLY

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The coast can be a madhouse sometimes, especially during good weather and a holiday weekend. Like now. The air is already smokey with beach fires this afternoon. We’re not supposed to leave fires untended even in damp weather, our dogs are supposed to be leashed, and most of our footprints in the sand should be gone by morning. All of us are visitors here.

Our favorite black oystercatcher couple was busy gathering food. There are no oysters here, but they are fond of mussels.

Gary and I walk out around 6am. We are not always the first on the sand. We look for Tammy, Tom, and Larry who are after the same things we are: a good long walk, good empty sand, and a few birds. We see the footprints of raccoons and coyotes and deer, and many birds. They tread all lightly.

Most days we go out before the sun is technically up, and most days the wind blows and the sky spits rain on us. But we never know. It was so mild by the time we turned for home on Friday that I took my hair down. Gary wanted a picture. (He wants credit for this.)
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OBSERVING PERFECTION

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A couple of people have commented that I have not been posting. My husband comments about that every couple of days. [It’s been almost a month, I think.] Gary is worried about me, and maybe I have even been a little worried about myself.

Yesterday, there was a young seal playing in the tide pool at the base of the sea stack we call “the seal.”

Not a fish trapped by the tide, or one of the sea lions or sea elephants we see more often. A true seal, and young though not a “baby.”
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THE EAGLES

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We have been on long walks lately. “Plenty of beach,” as Gary says while we walk more than two miles north. The young eagles have been around, Crows or a raven most often give warning, scattering black oystercatchers, gulls, whimbrels, and other shorebirds. Most days we see at least two of last year’s now-molting babies are overhead and sometimes their parents.

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NUMBER 5

/ janpriddyoregon / 9 Comments

To put this into perspective: We have lived in our family house since 1979, and in that time I had found only three glass floats before this week. We have many floats in the house because my family summered here since 1911, and my grandfather lived here year around since the mid-1940s. So most of the floats we have are not only very old, but old in their finding.

Gary has always been lucky about finding things. He has found floats the size of basketballs. But that was years ago he last brought home a float. Yet, twice he’s said, “Wow, you found that! I’m so glad it was you.”

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ON GIVING UP

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We walked north all the way around Hug Point and into the next beach last week. All the wave-swept stone was coated in green, like matching jackets. I would have walked to Arcadia, another half mile, but we’d have had to come home on the highway and there are a couple of dangerous stretches I know too well from when I was running.

I meant to share photos. It was an accomplishment to walk that far on the beach before the end of March.

The seaweed will begin to go once the sun is high enough to burn it during low tide.

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WRITING ON

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We go out for our morning walk well before dawn most days. We like to be the first on the sand—going out extra early we only meet other walkers on our way home. We inevitably find ourselves beach combing, even when we declare at the beginning that we will not walk so far. We will simply go out and home, and then we are trolling up and down that rocky shore. Everything has been stirred and shifted each morning. We found almost 200 pieces of seaglass in the last week or so. The flat-smooth pebbles and agates we’ve gathered had been taking over the house.

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SHAKEN & STIRRED UP

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It was about 2:45pm, and we were taking a nap when a huge crash blew us out of bed. We knew immediately what it was.

Yeah, it happened again. Another board through our roof. [see “Shaken Not Stirred”]

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YEARLING CROWS

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These two are nest-mates, we think, not pair-bonded. We see them every day in about this place on the power lines, near the Fentons’ home.

“I think deep down inside children are all the same,” she said. “They want two loving parents and they would prefer a house with a neighborhood they can play in. They want teachers that they can like. I don’t think children have changed that much. It’s the world that has changed.”

—Beverly Cleary
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