The first years we lived here, we did not see them at all. Perhaps we failed to pay attention when our sons were small, or perhaps they either flew right past or never came close enough to visit for long. Then in the ’90s, fourteen pelicans arrived one August and stayed in the area until the weather changed. Since then we have seen pelicans every summer. Often there have been fourteen.
Gary is downstairs talking to our friend Jim. They are discussing the elevated consciousness of a character in Moby Dick. It’s been a long time since I read that novel and I did not love it.
I have left them alone to figure out their meal. There is good homemade chili in the fridge, sourdough bread, cheeses, sauced rice, and fixings for all sorts of food. I will make waffles for breakfast before Jim leaves us and we head off to return samples to Portland.
Every morning there is something to see.
Yeah, this isn’t working for me. I will apologize now for sending two posts in one day. I wish WordPress would not change things. I realize they are trying to make the site more flexible and attractive, but mostly I just want simple. Having to relearn how to do things, even when desirable features are added, is not helpful. Maybe the problem is my operating system (it doesn’t like Macs?) or my browser (Safari), but failing to work properly with whatever the user has chosen is not helpful. So the dark box is somehow related to adding photos. Why?
Here we are.
I finally upgraded my account and paid for service, but everything is weird, changed, and I might just call this done. I have no idea why blackish blocks appear on my editing screen below. Asking questions has not helped. And a “Happiness Engineer” reaches out to help—got to be kidding. I do not want my “free domain name” that I would then have to pay for next year. Everything suddenly works differently. Again.
I just wanted to post a couple of photos and write about how today is a day Gary acknowledges every year: June 5, 1969 he flunked his draft physical.
We took some stunning photos, but you will have to be content with a view of the Cape, a sand castle, and the back of a new sweater. This is nothing more here.
Beach paths through the rocks and sand castles.
The back of a new sweater I am knitting for myself, pinned out for blacking. The single-ply hand-dyed wool is from South Africa. The silk/mohair I am carrying along with it is from a Portland company. I already have the front cast on.
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.
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.
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.”
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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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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This morning, my fourth glass float—scummy with dying sea life. Gary lost count of his finds long ago.
IMPERFECT PATIENCE 