you're gonna rise up singing

Summertime, and the livin' is easy, fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high.....one of these mornings you're gonna rise up singing, then you'll spread your wings and you'll take to the sky.  —Summertime from the Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, lyrics by DuBose Heyward.

midnight wind, a howling and demanding wind, sucked air and tent fabric in, and then, in giant bursts, expelled them again, displacing oxygen like the lungs of a colossus, or a bellows of cosmic proportions. this was no weakling storm lashing at us during the height of summertime on a beach on prince edward island.

we were camping in the dunes on a lonely stretch of that lovely island in the late 80's, a thing unheard of in the united states due to strict dune preservation measures and laws to protect piping plovers and other birds nesting in the sand (probably isn't allowed in canada anymore, either) when a mighty gale and torrential rain blew in and pulled several of our tent pegs and poles out of the sand, toppling one side of the tent. needless to say, we survived in the tent (but of course in the tent....we would never abandon our campsite and head for the nearest hotel, well, not on that camping trip anyway), and the kids had great tales to tell when they got back to school.

a beach made of sand or pebbles or a bold rocky shore or any up close and personal view of the sea—doesn't matter where it is as long as it's not mobbed—i'd travel a distance to find a sea view like that.

where you'll find me in the summertime—where i'd like to find myself—could be the wild and blustery shore of embleton beach in northumberland in the north of england (where the signs on the motorway pointing you in a northerly direction actually say THE NORTH, and going south it's THE SOUTH). the huge, imposing, romantic ruins of dunstanburgh castle (this ground felt the likes of john of gaunt, and the wars of the roses) in the distance beyond the golf course didn't look that far, but as i walked on the beach i realized they were farther away than i thought. that walk was a long time ago, way back in 2004; i have every intention of walking there again.

or it could be on fox island, a hill of granite ledges and boulders—and not much else—deposited by glaciers, only accessible at low tide in phippsburg, maine. climbing and poking around up there is an annual thing i like to do to mark and celebrate the arrival—the essence—of summer. the rocks, wearing skirts of sticky seaweed, periwinkles and barnacles, show off exposed backs and arms and thighs tattooed with colorful lichens.

seagulls do a lot of screaming, and they'll steal your picnic lunch—i've even seen them tugging on tote bag and backpack zippers—if you don't watch out. have to keep an eye on the tide, too; it looks harmless but it's not. i leave enough time to get back when the tide turns, and i stay on the sandbar. a tempting shortcut beckons through the water, yet even for a strong swimmer who doesn't mind cold water, it is not recommended since the swirling waves can pull you under and away. if fog rolls in, foghorns—like the one at seguin island and another one at pond island—are some of my favorite sounds of summer—eerie and forlorn, but wonderful, if you like that kind of thing.

remembered beaches—crane, plum island, embleton, jasper, reef bay, singing sands, goose cove, sea glass, crescent, reid, kitty hawk, higgins, pink, seawall, tarpon bay, popham, gulfside, bamburgh—and all the beaches in between with names i can no longer recall; names forgotten, adrift, blown away as if by a distant sea breeze, but to whose shores i will always return in the sweet lullaby of memory, smiling and singing a little song of summer.

~ photo of the dunstanburgh castle ruins by ed montalvo.

good morning perkins cove

when too much time passes between visits with old friends it becomes a kind of dangerous time, time that's barely hanging on by its fingernails, dangling above the great abyss of no time left and scrabbling to hold on. time like that begins to feel perilously long, especially the older we get (as opposed to the way most things these days seem to fly by in a flash), and suddenly an email or a phone call every month or so isn't good enough and it's necessary to make adjustments, to tweak schedules, tinker with calendars—those nasty little calendar squares that snappishly admonish dearie,
you're not getting any younger, you know—so what are you waiting for?—and extend a hand, mark a time in a box and say we're gonna do it, we're just gonna make plans.

such was the case with annemarie and me a few weeks ago. she was going to be staying in the area—turns out longer than i knew or expected, all having to do with her job—and we arranged getting together. annemarie's been my bosom buddy (bosom meaning the stickiest, never-to-be unstuck kind of friend) since we were both eleven years old. (ah, those thrilling days of junior high school when it was not going to be too long before we begged our mothers to let us get pierced ears and wear mascara and slip on oh-so-grown-up nylons.)

what's fantastic about our relationship is that whenever we see each other it's as if there's no such thing as time and we have somehow miraculously managed to connect with each other almost every day since that first day of friendship in 6th grade—as if hardly a few weeks have elapsed between visits since our school days to these days of our middle age.

we've always been there for each other, through the fun times and through the tough times, no matter what.

i drove down to oqunquit where she had rented a cottage at perkins cove and we picked up where we left off, progressing through the things that have flown by us in the intervening year and a half since we last saw each other.

it was good; dinner out and then the next morning a walk down from the house to the path above the rocks and along the shore. this was still the off season—most of the shops and restaurants were locked up tight—and it was quiet, quiet just the way i like it. annemarie and i were disappointed that the little breakfast place with outdoor tables was not going to open for a few more days, so we enjoyed a simple repast—tea and toast and fruit—back at the house.

it was good, that time together to laugh and reminisce and tell stories. always the stories. it was good, that continuation of last week and the week before and all the weeks before that. good and sticky.

bird rock or not

 a calydonian boar greets visitors at the entrance to the household wing at osborne house

our english friends, the lovely lady katherine and her handsome husband, john—a commoner like the rest of us—from horton, northampton, were recently in maine at their cottage in cape elizabeth. they took time away from their rigorous relaxation schedule—drinking a lot of tea (english habits die hard), reading books, going for walks along the beach, and barbecuing hunks of bloody, meaty things—and favored my husband and me with a few hours of their company. we met at—where else?—gritty's, our local brew pub.

lady katherine was the one who insisted i go to osborne house (!) on the isle of wight—my husband and i were overseas for a few weeks last june and he had a business meeting on the island—to see queen victoria's summer palace and the walled garden. i assumed she had been there; turns out she has never set foot in the place. the things you learn. so the four of us laughed about that, and talked about life in northampton, life in maine, life in general, and swapped stories about our aging parents and our grown children and their boyfriends/girlfriends/husbands—all the usual catching-up topics.

later, after we had said our goodbyes, i thought about the house they used to rent in cape elizabeth. i smiled to myself when i remembered how the seagulls would line up side by side, perching from one end of the roof to the other, like ducks in a carnival shooting gallery. they always seemed to be resting on lady katherine's roof, but not on any others. i guess the birds liked lady k's view the best.

funny, isn't it, how you'll have something random on your mind and then that will conjure up more similarly random thoughts. thinking about the cape elizabeth seagulls brought to mind other maine places where birds like to congregate in large numbers—the shorebirds at popham beach and in the nooks and crannies along our rocky coast, the great gatherings of puffins on eastern egg rock, and the seagulls and cormorants on the thousands of ledges and anonymous, vaguely egg-or-dumpling-shaped rocks in the ocean which are often surrounded by rafts of eiders and nosy harbor seals—also found on the "seal rocks" near portland—in the bay's rolling tide.

my train of thought kept coming back to eggs and rocks, and rocks and eggs, and rocks that, by scrunching your eyes into a good squint, resembled eggs. of course, once eggs got in my head, i had no choice but to think of birds.

i was given an animal picture book when i was a child which had a nice drawing of a large rock with lots of birds on it. that rock was the first rock—in what would become a long line of rocks—i knew to be called egg. i asked my parents why the author called it egg rock and they said can't you see why? it's obvious—it's shaped like an egg. that answer might have been obvious to them, but it was far from  obvious to me—it did not satisfy me then, and it still doesn't satisfy me. in my opinion, the rock in question appeared egg-ish or egg-like but it also appeared quite dumpling-ish or meatball-ish since it was basically roundish and therefore only an approximation of an egg's shape. i thought how dumb can parents be?

i argued with my parents that the rock in the picture book had birds all over it so wouldn't it only make sense to call it bird rock. (this was long before i knew about seal rock, which would have helped my argument immensely.) that's an obvious name, i told them. besides, some giant, mythical mutha of a bird had to lay that monster egg of a rock in the first place, and now the rock was covered with birds. everywhere birds, birds, birds. it's a bird rock, i insisted, like it or not.

my parents said to me bird rock or not bird rock, you're so argumentative you should become a lawyer. (they said that many times while i was growing up.)

maybe i should have, but i never did.


~ congratulations. you made it to the bottom of the page. now you get to hear the truth. i have a confession to make: my friend katherine is not a lady at all.... well, i mean, she is a lady, a lovely lady, just not a royal lady. i call her lady katherine because someone actually thought she was a royal lady once. but that's a story for another day.

under a cuban sky

and standing on the free soil of the pearl of the antilles—i can wish for it, wish for the impossible, wish for the possible—that's a better attitude—there's always that. no one can stop me.

instead i'm here, on a ship, atop a lounge chair, dressed in a t-shirt and striped pajama bottoms, cruising past the tropic of cancer—the cays and isles of the sabana-camaguey archipelago to the west—through the great bahama bank at a steady 19 knots, staring at the ghostly form of her cool, pine-covered slopes, slopes partially cloaked in gray clouds—the trinidad peaks, the sierra del escambray, the sierra maestra—moving, shifting in the distance—what is land? what is sky? what is hidden?—getting closer, 14 nautical miles to starboard, cuba the unattainable.

elusive freedom. a ten years' war, an 1898 war, regime after regime, with wars and rumors of war blocking her, blocking us, and always the fight to ensure her citizens would have civil and political freedom, the fight to guarantee that, at the very least, her sons and daughters living away from her shores could visit and send money home. always the fight to lift the barrier—push it away once and for all—which shrouds the pearl from our view.

to hear her music—the latin american son cubano of spanish guitar and african rhythms, and the derivatives, salsa, rumba, cha-cha-cha; the mambo "conversation with the gods", songs in kikongo brought to cuba by central african slaves—in the place where it originated. into cuba. a wish. will it happen in our lifetime?

             
i tried to bring you the buena vista social club's mandinga but it's not working and i can't delete it. sometimes i hate computers.

welcome aboard

for years i think it was a mixture of wariness and dread—a mild dread, but dread nonetheless—yes, those two things, that affected my whole notion of cruise on a monolithic cruise ship.

i was uncomfortable with the thought of being stuck onboard a vessel hundreds of miles out on the ocean with 2000 strangers. i was unnerved by what i perceived in my own (mostly imagined) version of the cruising demographic (mostly based on food orgies, attire, and level of drunkenness, instead of the usual age, sex, and income level): vacant-eyed, rum-guzzling gamblers under the hypnotic spell of slot machines and blackjack tables, white-haired folks (god love 'em cuz i'll be one soon enough) with tall white sport socks rising stoically out of tidy white sneakers (white hair is fine but, dammit, i refuse to put on this footwear as part of my twilight years fashion ensemble), people whose pot bellies tried to remain politely contained but instead willfully cascaded over high-waisted pants, and those travelers with a kooky love for nonstop eating in general and ice-sculpture brunch buffets in particular.

it all started last year. we bid on a cruise at a charity auction, never really intending to be the highest bidder, only meaning to have some fun and to raise money for a good cause, but then, before i knew exactly what was happening, the auctioneer called out "SOLD" and pointed in our direction. it was a done deal.

suddenly i was going on a cruise to the caribbean.

i know that most people would jump at the chance to sail in the warm turquoise waters past cuba and around jamaica and the grand cayman islands, and i know, had i written this before i left, that if i had told you that as the date of our embarkation approached i began to get a little nervous, you would have said to yourselves as you read this how can she be such an ungrateful wretch? she should stop being ridiculous and just have a good time.

exactly. i could hear you saying those words, i had a premonition about those words, so that's what i did. i listened to you. i went on a cruise and had a good time, just like you said, and i lived to tell my tale.

but before i go and have that good time that i'll tell you about soon (let's pretend it's still a few weeks ago), i have to get something off my chest, so to speak. i must confess something embarrassing to you, the real reason i balked at going on a cruise all along. confession #1: i hate crowds. i'm talking about the kind of crowds at the mall on a rainy saturday (you'll never find me there), the crowds in subways during rush hour, the crowds in touristy gathering spots like times square on new years eve (nor there either) and the all-day crowds on the piazza del campo in sienna (i survived), and the kind of crowds i envisioned on a giant cruise ship. confession #2: it's embarrassing, but i can get physically ill in dense, surging masses of humanity that press against me—my skins crawls, my palms start to sweat, my heart races, i feel headachy, nauseous and dizzy.

there. i've said it. i feel so much better now that i've unburdened myself.

as it turns out, i needn't have been concerned about crowds in the first place. the ship was huge and obviously, obviously—look at how i can toss out that word "obviously"with confidence and reckless abandon now that i've returned—the 2000 people were easily dispersed over all that square footage on deck after deck after deck. only the pool area was mobbed, but even the pool was okay when gobs of people debarked for excursions in the ports of call.

we walked around in town and then jumped back on the tender hours before we were due to set sail again to take advantage of the uncrowded atmosphere, to relax and listen to the live steel drum music onboard.

and the real demographic of the cruise? a pleasant mix of older folks, those in the middle aged 45 to 60-ish (that's me in the middle of the middle age demographic), trendy young people, and families.

as for the conclusions i drew from my own unofficial demographic, i can sum them up easily enough—my fellow shipmates dressed very nicely. i didn't notice any long, white tube socks paired with white sneakers—no, not even on those glassy-eyed, vacantly-staring gamblers. i couldn't help observing, however, the extreme popularity of the over-the-top ice-sculpture brunch buffet as i walked from table to table laden with platters of mouth-watering goodies (i've never seen so many different salads, meats, fish and desserts in one place) and happily filled my own plate sky high.

it was a wonderful trip and the millennium is a beautiful ship.

~ i'm back on dry land again at home in freeport and i am shaking my head and wondering about my imagined fear of cruising. coming up: more on cruising—stuff you won't find in travel brochures.

pirates and 21st century people

good morning. today you all may witness [above] hot, sexy queen conch love. (i should have been quicker and gotten this out yesterday, love day.)

queen conchs (both he and she are are queen conchs—there are no king conchs) are found in tropical places like the caribbean, where divers pull these mollusks from the sea and leave great piles of the empty pinkish-orangish shells near the waterfront after the conch meat has been harvested and sent to markets and restaurants.

if you like raw seafood like escargot, you'll like the taste of conch, which is similar to eating enormous escargot. the entire animal may be eaten, including that lovely appendage up there, as you will see in a second.

slurp it up like an oyster, chew it as is or in a nice seviche, sample it in soup, or eat it battered and fried in its frittered form. no matter what, it packs a powerful punch of protein.

way back in the 16th century (when these kinds of things started to get documented) pirates, pygmies and royalty professed a love for conch, especially since it was, and is, thought to be—perhaps a lot of wishful thinking, guys....and gals—an aphrodisiac, like oysters.

today, ordinary 21st century people like me enjoy eating it, too. i just recently learned that my niece, christina, has actually eaten queen conch penis—mm, mm, good—she beat me to it. (way to go, christina!) i'll let you know how it tastes when i try it sometime.

and that's all i have to say about conch—and conch penis—for now.



photo credit: jerry corsaut

into the teeth of the sea

i look back to where my mother set up our beach chairs. the hot sand is covered with a sea of colorful striped beach umbrellas. our own red, yellow and green umbrella is out there somewhere, but i can't find it. they all look the same to me. (one day—could it have been this day?—i got lost on the beach amidst all those confusing stripes, but my mother found me before i wandered too far away from our place on the sand.)

i squeeze my mother's hand. i am so little. one of my earliest memories is this day at the beach. we are walking toward the water, toward the waves. don't let go of my hand. don't let go of my hand. i am thinking those words. do i say them to her?

it seems as if we have been walking for a long time. i am tired. i notice the curvy lines the mollusk-filled, lettered olive shells create, leaving wet sand messages just like i do with a stick. i am sweaty and i want to cool off in the ocean. suddenly i see the waves. they are huge and frothy, white and noisy. my mother senses i am nervous so she encourages me by leaning down, looking into my eyes, and smiling.

"the waves are fun, you'll see. i'll lift you over them and you'll be flying along the water like a dolphin. you'll be at home in the sea like a starfish or a seahorse. and i promise i won't ever let you go," she says.

i am afraid the first time i meet the monster's foaming mouth, the waves like teeth noisily chomping at me—i wonder how hungry is the sea?—ready to snatch me up and swallow me down as i foolishly wade straight into them. a big one, a real soaker, gets me, throws its big mouth over my head trying to devour me, but my mother never lets go.

that was long ago and this is today. today i have no fear of the sea, i have only a deep, unquenchable longing for its beauty, its seductive power, its vast wildness. as much as the sea changes, turning by degrees from calm to roaring, rolling, churning, it also remains the same, an endless, comforting, back and forth—a sea time shuffle across the shore. i like that.

when i am on the island i open the sliding doors to welcome the sound and the smell of the sea into the house. the waves no longer look scary, but instead have turned into broad, toothy grins smiling up at me. the sea rushes in and does not attempt to eat me up, but greets me kindly and fills me to overflowing with peace.

the quiet

on tuesday the gray sky was solidly locked in place and the rain didn't let up much; it pattered and pattered and pattered a steady rhythm on the roof, the tempo hardly varying. over at cove road dock the morning tide was almost low and the rain, courteously, limited itself to falling gently for a few minutes.

and i took some pictures of the quiet.

fish

directly above my head a blue-green water world of thousands of hungry fish, including manta rays, whale sharks, groupers and wrasses, continues in a never-ending swirl of fins, tails, jaws, scales, mouths. for a short time i get to be a part of this world.

it's feeding time at the georgia aquarium's ocean voyager exhibit and the fish go crazy. huge buckets containing a feast of krill and pieces of fish float on the water and slowly release their bounty creating a wild feeding frenzy.

the staff at the georgia aquarium—the largest aquarium in the world they informed us—are knowledgeable and outgoing as they point out the highlights in each exhibit. we're glad that the day we're visiting we aren't being jostled by crowds of people; there is plenty of room to move. the staff can't explain the low number of visitors on this day, september 10th.

my favorites at the aquarium are the beluga whales, manta rays and sea horses. on second thought, make that all the fishy lives are my favorites.

we move along and enjoy each display of exquisitely unique aquatic creatures.

pocahontas light

look at that—the tiniest lighthouse just ahead. pocahontas light is the smallest lighthouse registered with the u.s. coast guard. you can find it on echo point on the southeastern end of great diamond island.

but if you get to talking while you're out enjoying beautiful casco bay, watch out......

because the island romance is out there and she can sneak up on you real fast.....

bangs island mussels

perfect timing. on this gorgeous maine afternoon—all sun and warmth and light salty breezes—we planned to cruise out to an island in casco bay to celebrate my nephew's birthday with family and friends. i jumped aboard the amelia g. with denny and nathan and off we went.

as we motored past littlejohn, basket, and mackworth islands and up the presumpscot river, we encountered rafts of eiders, many cormorants and an osprey-in-her-nest.

the bay was filled with boats which were, like us, lazily enjoying some of the last beautiful summer days of the season. in fact, our blink-and-ya-miss-it summah is my biggest maine complaint (i only have a couple; the other one is maine winters might be just a tad too long—otherwise, to me, this is paradise) but i look forward to the crisp, color-filled days of fall.

on the way to diamond cove we decided to take a closer look at bangs island mussels.

denny pulled up next to the company's floats, located south of basket island, and we had a chat with the two people on board. their mussel business operates all year, with mature mussels harvested after growing for about 16-18 months until they are 6-8 cm long. we heard about bangs island mussels' continuing battle with thieving eiders, whose diet is mainly mussels—maybe denny can help do something about that starting in october?

later in the evening i ate bangs island mussels as an appetizer at dinner. talk about freshfreshfresh (they were harvested from those floats up there, practically just a spit away from my seat on the porch) and yummy.... love you maine.

mooned

after
golden
sunset down
east the summer
moon shows off a piece of
orange crescent increasing, glowing low
in the west—briefly sharing the sky with
mighty jupiter rising in the east—and
dropping fast in the dark above the
twinkling little city on the sea where the
atmosphere has scattered the blues left
the reds behind and your tangerine light
beams along dusty air eventually finding
us as we end our day bobbing
in ebony waves watching
your display and you
end your day
sinking into
black
night.

beach morning

the sands at popham beach have been eaten up by the hungry ocean. the wide dunes and dune trails used to lead you from the parking lot to the beach, but now they are gone, replaced by pitifully small banks of sand where park rangers have piled unattractive tree trunks and limbs hoping to secure what sand is left. the same powerful storms that wiped out the beach also pulled the quaint, wooden, open-air bathroom/shower facilities into the sea. they rebuilt it out of drab cinderblock.

on monday it was cloudy—a great day for a hike on the beach. the inland temperatures were in the high 80's, but here it was 75 with a good breeze. to me the beach is best when it's cloudy. i don't like to roast in the blazing sun.

i walked out along the curving sand to the granite mound that is fox island. the tide was coming in, but there was still time for me to explore a little and safely get back over the sand bar to the mainland before the bar was surrounded and then covered by the treacherous swirling waters of the 2 p.m. high tide.

at popham you need to leave the island about three hours before high tide unless you don't mind being stranded on the bald, rocky dome until the tide turns.

popham beach at low tide is a beautiful, unique beach to explore.

at high tide it is almost entirely swallowed by salty waves.

birth of a wave

here is something i learned about the life of a wave.

it's a fact: waves have lives.

i read a true story in the new yorker a while ago about a wave that changed the course of a man's life. i think the story was called, simply, the wave. in the article, the author, whose name i can't recall, recounted his first-hand experience with a life-altering tragedy involving one killer wave.

i had never thought of waves as being born, as being individual entities in nature, before i read this account of a vacation in mexico gone dreadfully wrong. the author slowly revealed the story of events leading up to the fateful day when his young wife suffered a fatal accident while bodysurfing at a beach they had visited many times.

woven into the story of the recently married husband and wife is the story of the wave, the actual wave which would, after many days or even weeks of rolling toward land, make its way to that mexican beach, on that particular day, at that moment when they were enjoying the gorgeous salty sea with many other vacationers.

the physics of wave-action is complicated and not fully understood. waves are born far out at sea a long time before they actually crash on the shore. wind, sun, gravity, water temperature, and ocean currents contribute to the growing swell. the slope of the shoreline as the wave churns toward land also contributes to wave-action.

what amazed me more than anything in the story was the fact that this killer wave was no thirty-foot monster, the kind you hear about in places like hawaii, the one surfers dream of, and of which surfing spectators are extremely wary, for it can slam into you unexpectedly and do some serious damage even if you are nowhere near the edge of the water.

the wave in this story looked just like any other big, beautiful, picture-perfect wave, but in reality it was an invisible tyrant, releasing nature's unseen power and becoming brutally frightening behind the scenes, below the surface. for the rest of the people swimming and body-surfing that day, the wave was a blast, a thrill; the kind of wave that's lots of fun. no one else was injured, or had ever been injured at that location. and yet....

one wave among many; surges toward one beach; snatches one life.

i will never again look at a wave without thinking about its shore-driven life, without wondering is this wave one of those?

the stone house

{the ocean, in the distance past the heather garden, was veiled in fog}

fog, along with drizzle, has had a good hold on the coast lately. my mother was up from boston so we took a morning drive down to freeport's stone house. the stone house was originally a private summer residence. it was left to usm and is now used for writer's conferences and other functions. it stands lonely and alone at the end of the peninsula.

not a soul was around; we had only fog for company. what an ideal setting for an agatha christie type mystery novel. spooky. all we needed was to run into a dead body on the lawn......

fortunately no bodies were to be seen, but with over a week's worth of nothing but dampness, i'm afraid i am going to see moss start to grow between my toes like it does along old gray lichen-topped stones.

keeping time with the waves

once upon a time in march an ibis explained her ibis dance to me:

i tilt my head and lean down,
i fluff my feathers just so,
i lift my wings a tad,
i concentrate like crazy,
i focus using my perfect eyesight,
i take serious strides with my

skinny

pink

stick

legs.

five long steps forward
a quick three hops back
six sure-footed sashays sideways
keeping time with the waves.

boy oh boy oh boy, look what i see.
dipping my curved bill
strategically into the sea
i taste (gulp) one fine fish, then (gulp) another.
oh, what a day!
oh, such a day!

and on such a day
do you think,
would you possibly consider,
um, maybe,
if you might like to,
perhaps,
fish and splash
here
    in
       the
         fab
            sea
                with
                     me?

under the pier

in winter, with everything on top of the pier boarded up for the season, to me the place to be was under the pier. on a fine, sunny, not-too-cold afternoon i took a look around down there on the underside of the historic wooden pier at old orchard beach. the tide was on its way in again, but still fairly low. i liked the white sea ice and the briney green growth on the wooden pilings, and the sound of the waves as they crashed and sent a glorious spray into the pilings at the end of the pier. the sand was light brown and smooth, startlingly clean - no rocks, shells, seaweed or debris of any kind -- no offerings from nature or man.

i looked left and then right, up and down the beach, and saw a few people, mostly couples and people with children, out enjoying the sunshine and fresh air. a young man and woman in their 20's walked past me as i took pictures under the pier. deep in conversation, they saw only each other. when they got to the other side and out of the pier's shadow they stopped, turned to each other, and leaned in. they spoke words lost on the wind and the woman buried her face on the man's jacket. her face rested just below his shoulder, pressed tight, secure and warm against his bones. she lifted her head and they slowly kissed and moved away together along the sand.

the first pier was built in this sand in 1898. it was 1770 feet long. through the years, countless northeasters and blizzards have damaged the pier; the great fire of 1907 destroyed the whole structure. it was rebuilt many times, and each time the pier was reduced in length, leaving today's pier, the 1980 version, at only about 500 feet.

the old apple orchard on the hill (no longer in existence) for which the town was named, was an important landmark for sailors when sailing vessels dominated the seas. today the main part of old orchard beach has become, sadly, a little run down, a little worn out. tacky tourist shops and amusement park rides dominate the scene on the beach.

in a bygone era, old orchard beach served as a holiday resort for america's rich and famous, a place where large homes and fancy inns welcomed them, and where thousands danced on the pier above the sparkling waves. there used to be a casino up on the pier, too. guy lombardo, rudy valle and duke ellington all visited old orchard beach years and years ago, when the pier was known as a glitzy hot spot of the night.

from where i stood underneath the pier, if i listened very closely, i could just make out the faint sounds, high above my head beyond the waves, of many shiny and glittery pairs of elegant evening shoes moving and twirling with the rhythm of the music on the old dance floor on the pier......

january sea idyll

~january 9, 2011~

i sit and stare at the sea. i am held here near the edge of the ocean hypnotized and mesmerized, entranced by the sight and sound of the gulf of mexico spread out in front of me. oddly, the endless pounding of the warm waves on the sand reminds me of home, of maine. i close my eyes. that "shhhh" sound....in maine the temperature hovers in the teens and a northeasterly wind blows through the pines. i can just hear the air lifting over the snowy branches and across the frozen woods behind our house. maine is here in the infinite lapping of salty water; the sound of waves is so similar to winter wind, an echo of home....

in january all is quiet on the beach except for splashing waves, dancing breezes and chattering gulls and terns. only a few people walk along the shore, some moving quickly with dogs straining on leashes. a few others search for shells. the holidays are over and winter and spring vacations are still weeks away. i like the island best this way. i welcome solitude. i welcome gentle warmth. i am not slick with sweat. inside the house there is no need for artificial air conditioning. on sanibel in winter i can leave the porch doors open and invite the rush of fresh breezes and the sigh of rolling seas into the rooms. peaceful. the outdoors is indoors and the indoors is outdoors, and nature is all around, with me always....

seashell mollusks 101

abandoned seashell homes of mollusks. found on sanibel island, january, 2011.

to start, a little conchology (the collection and study of mollusks and seashells) for you today. pictured here is a small sample of the shells i found on our trip to the island. starting at the top and going clockwise: small horse conch, (greek for shell, pronounced konk), two carrier shells, fighting conch, alphabet cone, banded tulip, sanibel drill, calico scallop, miniature lightning whelks, lettered olive, lightning whelk, banded tulip. in the middle is a delicate white fig.

throughout time, these exquisite shells have had many uses. they have been utilized as art, jewelry, money, buttons, ink, road gravel, and in chicken feed (the calcium carbonate makes stronger egg shells).

the shells are created by secretions from the mantle, the part of the animal's body just under the shell. the mollusk shell is made of calcium carbonate and a little protein. there are no cells in a seashell. the animal's shell house needs to be constantly enlarged to accomodate growth. the shell grows from the bottom up; the newest part of the shell is around the opening where the little guy pokes out. with absolute precision, the shell is constantly added on to and repaired.*

the mollusks who originally inhabited these beautiful shell homes mostly float around in ocean currents, sometimes for hundreds of miles, or they scoot around on the ocean floor. they are eaten by other animals like starfish. some are taken by fishermen. others end up on the beach, and if they are not eaten or do not dry out in the sand, they will wash back out to sea and live another day. to most people mollusks are rather unattractive and sluglike, but once you get used to them i personally think they are cute. in january on sanibel there are more fighting conchs on the beach than people. it can get a tiny bit smelly at the trash line (made up not of garbage, but of mostly sea debris like seaweed, dead crabs and starfish, and thousands of living and empty shells at the high tide mark), especially after a storm.

three body parts are found in a mollusk: the head, the viseral mass, and the foot, which is the muscular end of the body. at the open end of a single shell mollusk (a univalve) the foot can pull in and seal the shell up tight, like a door, against predators. by closing the opening the mollusk also stays moist. without moisture the mollusk will die. this muscle also enables the mollusk to move. mollusks leap (florida fighting conchs are completely docile, but they can leap, so they can appear a bit aggressive, hence the name), hop, pull and dig into the sand.* what sturdy little creatures!

the japanese (who eat absolutely anything from the sea), the french (who love their tiny univalve periwinkle seafood), the italians (who have their specialty dish scungilli marinara made with knobbed whelk) and the caribbean islanders (whose delicacy is the meaty queen conch) seem to eat the most variety of univalve mollusks. if you able to deal with their looks and texture, almost all mollusks can be eaten, but some are tastier than others. of course the most popular ones are the yummy bivalves commonly found in restaurants: clams, mussels, and oysters. ed and i ate some of the biggest, freshest oysters we have ever had on sanibel. delicious!

*this information found in man and mollusc.net and oceanic research.org.

hungry birds

brown pelicans in the morning. sanibel island, january, 2011.

ok, so now the days on sanibel start to flow together in my mind. no more day 1, day 2. etc. the excruciating schedule of events during our time on the island (long walks on the beach, staring at the ocean, observing the birds, writing in my little notebook, more long walks, shelling, swimming, hypnotic looking at and listening to the sea, more bird watching....you get the idea of how hectic things were) has made it impossible to remember exactly what happened on what day. therefore i will lead you through the island's delights as they come to me.

early one morning it started out rather chilly (50 degrees! ha! freezing, right? wait until i tell you what the temperature is like in maine-stay tuned!) and windy, and on that morning more pelicans than usual were engaged in a feeding frenzy. they dove into the ocean and flew away with mouths full of fish, only to return again to gorge themselves some more. trying to photograph the fast movements of the pelicans in flight was difficult. i tried, but not with much success.

later in the morning sandpipers in the surf and tropical ibises in the dune sunflowers were enjoying their own feasts. all these birds were so focused on devouring food they hardly looked up, and allowed me to get quite close. i guess they figured get it while the gettin's good.