My mother was pleased to read that as we age we lose our taste for sweet. She had a powerful sweet tooth and hoped this aging side effect would lesson her desire for cake and snickerdoodles. Alas, as she discovered later, the change in taste is not that we care less for sweet as we age, but that we lose our perception of sweetness. We do not crave the flavor less, we want more of it to satisfy our tongue.

There are other kinds of sweet.

Gary commented this morning on how I push off hard from my toes as I walk. “Especially the left one. While I graze the ground graceful as a dancer.” He laughed, and I wondered if the habit was left over from all those years of running.

We saw runners and dog-walkers. I followed a deer’s footprints from the tideline to the soft dry sand and lost her. Gary first spotted the raccoon prints. I found three back shells of my favorite “ugly clam” and three top shells that did not match. The back shells are always colorless, translucent, and shaped with a hole in the middle because the Pododesmus macrochisma shapes its home around the point of a rock. These C-shapes are even more delicate and far less common than the tops, which are rare enough. I found shells from four species of limpet. A tiny agate. We do not know what drew the adult bald eagle to the sand near Asbury Creek. She left no trace.