Yeti, our last dog’s favorite treat was a Greenie, a green starchy chewable bone-shaped object she could chew into bits and swallow in a minute of two. Green meanies are something else and they hurt my hand to hold, as I am in this photo. I wish people would pick them up so I didn’t have to.
Coming back from my run on this morning, I saw a crow standing well out on the shore in about an inch of water. I gave the bird a bad time about that. “What are you doing out there? That’s not your place. You don’t belong there.” The crow was indifferent to my chiding, but I went on a bit more. “Get in here!” Then the crow turned her head and I saw her red beak and realized she was a black oystercatcher. I had to apologize.
I arranged my finds on the railing of what we call “The Cat Deck” though we no longer have a cat. Most of what I found this morning plus four spices of limpet, scallops of two kinds, a round button of rust (iron, rusted clear through), “Ugly clams,” and the back shells and one head shell of chitons that we call “butterflies.”
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Running on the highway, I once found a perfectly serviceable machete. The beach is our more common source of junk.
Yesterday was easier. Gary found a commercial grade 3/4 size garbage can kicking around in the creek a little over a half mile north. We almost filled it with plastic trash, including the rubber boot, but we didn’t find the oversize shoe this morning. The thick black lid in the upper right corner [above] was about ten inches across, and half under it, what is that flexible grill-like nylon object? It weighed a ton.
We’ve always gathered litter, but mostly stopped in March 2020. Even then, Gary would pick up dangerous stuff that could hurt someone: syringes and fluorescent light tubes. But we’re back at work.
Continue readingThe tiny closet of our condo is already stuffed with clothing I rarely wear. I need to purge. This is the story of our times. We focus on gathering until we run out of room and have to wonder: Why do I need this?
This morning, my fourth glass float—scummy with dying sea life. Gary lost count of his finds long ago.
Our cat Leakey was named for the anthropologist. She arrived on our doorstep literally half-starved and Gary saw her first. When I got home, I picked her up and she purred like a motor boat. “Don’t touch it, don’t pick it up!” Gary said over and over, but who had fed her the can of tuna? I brought her into the house. She had fishhook claws and liked to tease the dog.
The other day when we came home from our morning walk, Gary did what he generally does and walked around the house. Just in case. That day he found a dead rat on the north side concrete walkway. No blood, no wound, an apparently sleek and healthy but certainly dead rat.
I should know what sort of fish this is, but I know only that it resembles a member of the seahorse family and it’s dead. Poor thing.
We track where the sun sets in relation to the rock o.6 nautical miles offshore. When it’s north of the rock, we think summer, and when it sets south of the rock, we know summer is gone. The truth is that this shift from south to north this happens close to the Equinoxes. The sun set right behind the rock a couple of days ago.
This is a partially threaded warp, just strung through the reed, looking at the back of the reed. The new warp is red and soft violet-and-purples and ashy pinks. All hand-painted or dyed-in-the-wool fingering weight merino. I have begun threading the heddles since I took this photo and might begin weaving tomorrow. The weft will be half handspun and mostly red. Three shawls.
We picked up almost 40 pounds of trash yesterday. We meant to walk a mile north and not begin collecting until we turned for home. But there was too much to ignore and we were overloaded by the time we’d walked a mile. On the way home we realized we could not even complete our stretch of the shore and left the beach to drag our load on the road. The beach was littered with tiny bits and pieces, but also major chunks of heavy stuff. Usually we find plastic bottle lids, but yesterday there were so many! Many blue and with embossed Japanese characters. Two short lengths of heavy braided rope, poly-styrene foam, and my favorite green plastic twine that I often find in four-inch sections, usually with a knot. There were plastic bottles and a huge hatch lid Gary found late and just in time to use as a sled to drag the junk home. Some trash was stashed and we hope to bring it home today. We will need an extra trash pick-up. Recycling will not take it. No one will take poly–styrene foam in any condition. It is an enduring menace to the environment.
Perhaps it’s understandable that halfway through our walk I held perfectly still when the dog ran up close to me barking. In the past I would have assumed that the wagging tail was counter to the bark. I will not be making assumptions anymore.
People think they can burn plastic into nothing. No, it turns into lumps I pick up later.
And all those illegal fireworks? I am still collecting the refuse from the last blast.
However, most of the refuse Gary and I pick up is from ships at sea. I know this because it’s plastic and nylon rope and containers no one brings to a beach picnic.
Just so you know.
The sky just after sunset was not the color you see in the photo below. It was purely red and midnight blue, but my camera has a better eye than we do, so it captures the golden highlights of the set sun that we did not see at all. What we saw was a band of lipstick red. That’s what the human eye could perceive. I wish you had been here to see it too. Still, my camera has a pretty view. (The little yellow dot at the bottom left of center was a brief beach fire on the sand.)
May 2019 bring you joy and contentment, a deep sigh of pleasure, a dog or cat to pet, good meals, quiet walks, many good books, a brand new view of something genuinely marvelous. I just watched a video of a solitary narwhale traveling with a pod of beluga whales. We all need friends. He’s picked up their bubble-blowing habit and swims close. Have a look at the footage.
&PRIDE Press 