Time out of mind

When you listen to music, do you hear harmonies in your head? And if you do, can you remember a time when you weren't able to hear them?

In one of the precious moments of very early spring with which north Florida blesses us most years, I walked along the beach at Guana today with a two delighted dogs and a dear old person. This is the time I dedicate to reflection, to contemplation, to what is called prayer in some spiritual languages. Today my internal reflections were framed by the drama of the high and low tide marks, defined by the fullness of the moon. And those reflections turned again and again to memory; specifically, to conditions of my own memory for which I have no fallback recollection. What existed before a given memory?

Until she died about four years ago, neither of my sons could remember a time in their lives when we didn't have a well-loved nursemaid of a dog named Sheba. She came to us when Mac was a little more than three years old. When he searches his memories there are no conscious flashes of images in which Sheba isn't at least a peripheral presence. Likewise, I don't believe either of my sons remember the ocean being introduced to their consciousness. Like their dad, they remember it as always having been there. In contrast I have a mental image, undimmed after all these years, of the first time I stepped into the shifting sand and surf of St. Augustine Beach. I was seven years old, had been born and raised among the hills and mountains of east Tennessee, and I had never seen anything so dazzling. My sons, like their dad, were carted to the beach most days, weather permitting, as babies in diapers, and set down into warm tide pools to sift sand and turn brown as acorns. Like Sheba, the beach was Always There.

Music and vocal harmony feels this way for me. My ear was tuned by my genetics - both my mother and my father were fine singers, and it might be argued that my father was actually quite a gifted singer whose sweet light baritone was relatively untrained but undeniably lovely. My mother fed me close harmonies with breast milk. I absorbed melody, nakedly gorgeous vocal ability and preservation of musical history through the voice of Joan Baez before I could talk. It would be many years before my dear teacher Sister Patricia would introduce me to formal bel canto singing, but when she did I recognized it right away. I'd been able to harmonize with "Barbara Allen" as a toddler; the duet of Palestrina's Stabat Mater was a challenge I'll have to tell you about later but as difficult as it would be to sing (and I'm proud to tell you I did selections from it with Miss Judy, one Lenten season long ago), it sounded like the most natural thing in the world to me. My mother poured the folk music of her time into my open ears and heart but she also believed in its roots, which were most easily to be heard in those days in the Grand Ole Opry. This, too, she poured out like baptismal waters. By the time I was invited to sing in a choir when I was eight years old, finding an alto line a third below the soprano was as comfortable to me as an old quilt. And though I already knew I didn't have the top range to voice them, those upper harmonies a third or a fourth or a fifth above the melody were just as familiar and comforting in my inner ear as that same faded old quilt.

What, my dears, do you recall in this way? Is there something you know you must have learned but cannot remember the learning of it, so that it seems something you were born with? Is there a person to whom you must have been introduced who nevertheless seems to have been with you from the moment of your birth? Are there other like tricks of memory and learning?

Or is it just me?

Ancient and modern, washed on the shoreline

Note to self: Self, you are very lucky. There is no snow on your roof. The air temperature today was close to 60 degrees. You walked on the beach today. Do no complaining, Self.
Note to friends in northern climes: Friends, I wish you were all here.

We attended a clinic today at the Environmental Education Center at GTMMER. It was conducted by one of the guys who works at Guana, a self-taught amateur fossil collector like many of us named Jake, and a good time was had by all. Our friends Suzanne and Chuck came down (we were sorry to miss Ray and JoAnne - feel better soon, Ray!) and we spent an hour or so comparing some of our favorite finds and learning from Jake and each other. One gentleman had what Jake thought might be a sperm whale tooth, collected many years ago from a beach in the Bahamas.
It must have been 6 inches long, or more, and was quite amazing. Another lady brought the beautiful white turtle shell you see in the photo.

Jake's own collection included some examples of fossilized pieces we've all found but identified with varying degrees of accuracy. He took us through a thoughtful presentation, but spent a good deal of time poring over our pieces, identifying where he could and honestly admitting where he couldn't. Perhaps the most exciting piece we talked about was a jawbone with one tooth remaining in it, brought by Suzanne. Since it was Suzanne who first made me realize that the dull old sharks's teeth we'd collected for years were actually relics of planetary history dating back thousands of years, I took special pleasure in finding that the jawbone was mostly likely that of a jaguar, and probably more than 12,000 years old.
It's a terrible photo, taken with my phone, but you get the idea. Interestingly, we have a tooth, found some years ago along the beach in Guana, that almost looks like it might fit into that piece of jaw.

The room at Guana's EEC was full of people. There were old veterans of the beach walk, incidental collectors, people of our age and older, and, delightfully, at least a couple of young fans, one of whom shyly asked several questions and another of whom came in late and asked for help identifying the species of sharks from which her carefully gathered collection of teeth had their genesis. My dear old person and I stopped on the way out to donate a piece we'd found last weekend. It looked like an arrowhead, and so might well be an artifact of an ancient native people, although when we picked it up, it looked like a piece of rock. When it was cleaned up, we started to think it mightn't be an animal fossil, so we left it in the care of the Guana team. From there we set off for the beach, and walked 2 or 3 miles into a chilly northwest wind under a bright blue sky skirted with wind-brushed white clouds. It was a lovely Saturday. I do hope yours was at least as fine.

The weekend before

The weekend brought a couple of beach walks for us under a lowering sky, sometimes promising rain, sometimes delivering on the promise. Now and then the sun would break through and illuminate some small treasure like this beautiful, doomed starfish, washed back and forth in the surf. There were few beachgoers willing to walk in the chilly wind under the dark skies so we had the beach to ourselves, as is often the case this time of year. The new moon brought what weather geeks call "astronomical high tides", along with their companions, beloved of beachcombers: astronomical low tides. On this day the views to the north and south were nearly as astronomical in their contrast.

This was the view to the north. Its warning, to those of us accustomed to subtropical midwinter weather, is of a cold wind and perhaps rough seas.




This was the view to the south. Here the warning is much more dire: I am a cold, dark wind from the south, from which compass point usually come sweet warm breezes. I might even be catastrophe.


There was a beautiful eye in the center of this, an opening in the clouds that really looked like an eye, just above where we walked on the beach. It wasn't so much the eye of a hurricane as it was a gentle celestial eye, opening on the dramatic meteorological activity. I tried to catch it with the camera in my phone, with mixed and mostly unsatisfying results. But you don't need an image. Reach back in your mind to a moment of your own. Think of the weekend, or the weekend before that one, when you walked on the beach or in the neighborhood or in the park and saw a break in the clouds, a beautiful blue spot, touched with swirls of white clouds, a glimmer of hope against the dark, lowering clouds.

So much for romantic reflection on the beauty of the weekend that was. I now direct your attention to THIS Saturday's Beach Fossil Day at Guana's Education Center, which Rod and I eagerly anticipate (what ARE those things we've found on the beach??), and to whatever your own weekend may promise.

Fossils, courtesy of GTMMERR

This is a close photo of the coquina you see in constrast to the fine white sand along the beach at Guana. Nestled in this stuff, which is mostly crushed or small shell, you can find shark's teeth of all kinds of sizes, pieces of turtle shell and teeth, all ancient, all amazing.

To those of you who love the beaches and inland waterways so perfectly protected and blessedly available to the public at our beloved Guana, here is the equivalent of a Valentine from those fine folks. To those of you who turn an indulgent but slightly bored eye to my praise-singing of Guana's abundant natural offerings, accept my thanks in advance.

Because I wrote a post in celebration of the anniversary of GTMMERR, sent it to the Director and opened a dialogue with him, I've been added to a mailing list. This means info I didn't have before, including an announcement all fossil geeks will find to be the delightful Valentine I promised (and everyone else will find incredibly boring): the GTM Education Center is hosting an educational event on February 12 about collecting and identifying fossils on our beaches. (If you're interested, reserve a space by calling the Center at 904.823.4500 - it's free, but space is limited.) We all think of shark's teeth when we think of fossils and my dear old person and I have a shocking number of these collected, but there's an amazing range of teeth and other fossils to be found on our beaches, and get this: we're invited to bring stuff along to have it identified! I might not have to plan that trip to the Paleontology Department at U of F in Gainseville after all. In all the years I've lived here, as I may have mentioned, I didn't even start looking for shark's teeth until, in the office of a colleague, I noticed a postcard image identifying different kinds of shark's teeth. I commented, because we walked on the beach all the time and I took them for granted. To my amazement, she said, "You know they're hundreds of thousands of years old, right? Some of them are millions of years old." I'd had no idea. And I was hopelessly hooked.

I've written about this, too, of course, in part because the University of Florida houses a great little museum of paleontology AND it is possible, in theory at least, to make an appointment with the nice geeky professorial types who work there. I'm told you can set up time and pretty much literally pour your collection of fossilized stuff on someone's desk for inspection and identification. But why drive to Gainesville? Come down to the Education Center. I wish you could all come, especially the kids. So if any kids care, let me know. I'll write a post for the really discriminating blog palate: kids, who know how fascinating fossils really are, because after all, when you think about it, they're pieces of dinosaurs. How cool is that?

Winter themes and variations

The cold-but-perfect weather has continued in St. Augustine. Rodney and I walked at Guana yesterday and the day before under polished blue skies and bright sunshine, the air temp around 50 degrees, but with an uncompromising wind blowing at about 15 miles an hour out of the north-northeast. We even took two of the dogs, who love walking on the beach as much as we do, but have certain prejudices against chilly weather. At a certain point, no amount of whale-watching or red knot-sighting or even possible gopher tortoise observations are enough to keep Meg from sitting down firmly, shivering pathetically, and insisting on going home for winter sports like toasting marshmallows by the fire or making pots of soup. As it happened that we saw no whales those days, we gave in and returned to the fireside.

But the winter's theme of repeating something in the name of learning it to the point of excellence seems to persist. We've begun to get early Florida strawberries, and they've been baked into several variations of a remarkable coffee cake (the recipe for which originated with the venerable Bibical reference of cake-baking, Susan Purdy's A Piece of Cake). We used blueberries in one instance, but there's something perfectly balanced in the pairing of this cake's delicacy and the late-winter strawberries. This is the one we baked last night, with Rodney and I as sous chef supporting kitchen staff, and Dylan as Chef de Cuisine. My phone camera doesn't do it justice, but no camera could capture its sublime simplicity without benefit of palate. You'll have to take my word for it. And as always if anyone's interested, the Eat Here kitchen is happy to provide a how-to.

As for me, I have been distracted from most other recreation for the past couple of weeks as a contagion has possessed me more and more thoroughly. Just look at this. Thanks to some people who shall remain nameless (but I'm looking at you, Elisabeth) I have become obsessed with color and texture and have spent the past few weeks crocheting thing after thing. Even with my phone camera, you can see the intriguing greens and creams, reds and golds that have captured by eye and my heart. I'm only able to make the most rudimentary designs. I'm not capable of the elaborately adorable designs of my friend Erin at Ultra Cute Crochet. I'm not even close to the elegance of design imagined and created by Elisabeth Williamson of Mon Amie Ribbonerie, whose crocheted confetti pieces are treasured by the owners of her pieces, but whose artistic endeavors are more and more focused on ribbon flowers. But I can make a couple of things, and my winter labors are concentrated on making those pieces over and over again, learning with each piece. (See the beach photo of Rodney, above, who is wearing a slightly flawed but well-loved example of my handiwork.) The joy of matching colors and textures, high contrast and subtle shading, soft as lambs wool or smooth and fresh as cotton...these are the pleasures of winter for me this year. I hope your fireside is comforting and some of your joys as simple and uncomplicated as these.

A final note about the rhythm of winter and the coming of spring: I saw the first robin yesterday. My dear Jayne and I try to mark the promise of spring with this early visible sign. Last year the robins were here on the first of January; this year, a bit later. Whether early or late, the promise of spring always arrives with the folding of their wings.

Dragonfly memories

Dragonflies stalk the beaches of Guana in elegantly deadly pursuit of mosquitos and possibly the beginning or end of their reproductive cycles, which are, I think, much more closely tied to their life cycles than we may imagine. Today this one was caught in a fatal tangle of waves and sand. I lifted it up with care, awed by the brilliant turquoise color of its body and the beautiful bright green of its head - colors that had spilled across my lap only last night as I worked on a warm woolen scarf for Dylan. I was able to capture the electrifying colors of its body, perhaps less so the shimmering bronze and copper-bright wings that moved delicately in the wind, in a photo: one brief moment of memory, and then it was gone.

But memory: I've been thinking about that. We talk about it often, my dear old person and I, for the obvious reason that we've lived through Alzheimer's with Pop, where the erosion of memory is the raw and never-healing edge of encroaching disease. We talk about it because pain management is a balancing act of pharmacology and surrender, resistance and retreat; memory is a wild card. In Alzheimer's, the most common memory loss is short-term. According to our dear friend David, a clinical psychologist whose illustrative description helped us envision the thing, memory loss in Alzheimer's typically happens from the outside, in. Imagine the brain is an apple: those memories you created 5 minutes ago, or yesterday, are the skin of the fruit. Memories created 5 or 10 years ago are the apple's flesh. And the things you learned before you can remember learning them (washing your face, going to the bathroom on your own, combing your hair): these are the seeds at the center of the apple. They are closely held and the last things to leave you.

What if you don't have a dementia in which memory is lost? Is your memory perfect? What DO you remember, after all? I cannot remember a time, reaching back past those snapshot recollections I have from being 2 or 3 years old, in which I could not hear musical harmonies in my mind. I could hear harmonies before I knew what to call them, how to label them, that they even had names. In memory I have always heard thirds and fifths against melodies. Melodies, in my memory, always seem to be of secondary interest; it was always harmonies I loved most. So: I do not remember the time before I heard music in dimensions.

Rodney doesn't remember a time when he did not know what the ocean was. He was born close by, he was taken to the beach as a tiny baby and the scent, the breath, the warmth and rhythm of the ocean are part of his heartbeat. (Like many who were not born on at the coast, I have a crystalline recollection of seeing the ocean for the first time: I was 7 years old and it was life-changing.) Dylan doesn't remember a childhood without Sheba, our dear old nanny-Boxer. He was 2 or so when we got her, but his childhood memories are shadowed by her presence. Mac, of course, doesn't remember a time without Dylan. He was 20 months old when Dylan was born, but in his recollections, Dylan has always been there.

Still, memory is a weird thing. It is as though a virtual video recoder is running all the time, for all of us. Our brains purr along, capturing everything, storing it all up for future retrieval. This seems self-evident; how else would we be able to call up memories of electrifying accuracy? How else would things we might in all honestly prefer to forget push themselves to high-definition recollection, front and center? And why does the film seem to break, now and then, so that review of our memories shows not a smooth, frame-by-frame view, but rather a halting clunky series of images like disjointed still images? Trauma? I was 11 when my mother died, and when I look back on those memories some of them stream along like film strips; some move with the jerky awkward flow of single images strung together. I can see clearly the scene in the darkness of evening in which my stepfather woke me to tell me she was dead. With an ache that has lasted these many years, I recall her funeral, despite being given a solid dose of paregoric to stop me vomiting that morning. I remember who gave me the medicine; I recall the glass from which I drank it. But there is so much more I have lost, or forgotten, or cannot bear to let myself recall.

Are our brains and their attendant memories and images wrinkled and changed forever by trauma, and perhaps compromised in their abilities to reliably deliver memories in their wake? Do the carefully recorded movies, those high frame-rate recordings, degrade under trauma so that the recording consists only of stop-motion still images with a different kind of power?

What do you remember, my loves, and what have you forgotten?

The face of the Sacred

Endlessly delightful: flowers that bravely square themselves off, resolutely point themselves toward scorching sun and withering salt, and bloom with such equanimity you might think them at home in an English garden. These are the faces of delicate white morning glories, looking into the overcast skies of the southern Atlantic this morning. They are a fit metaphor for a person facing chronic pain armed with a good combination of stoicism and pharmacology, though the metaphor breaks down as the person walks determinedly into the northeast wind. His is not to simply survive, as morning glories must; his is to set aside pain and keep walking, keep walking, keep walking. His is to find joy at every turn, as often as he can.

Have you ever been in a hospital on some occasion of pain or worry or fear or uncertainty? If you have, you may also have found yourself in the L&D "baby gallery", looking at tiny miracles brought to life by people you don't even know, moved to a smile or perhaps that tightness behind your eyes where tears dwell. For here is hope. Here is the future. This morning is not so different, as you dear, patient readers have heard from me so often this summer; it is not so different here this year, as turtles nest in breathtaking numbers. There is no glass-walled nursery into which we can peer for comfort, but hope prevails: here is the future.

My old teacher (she of honored memory in this blog, Sister Patricia Eileen) used to remind us that the face of Christ is to be seen in every person we meet. The "Christ" part is a matter of spiritual or theological nomenclature, in my opinion: one might refer to the face of the Buddha, the face of the Goddess, the face of the Great Spirit...in the end it all means the same thing, which is that we look into that which is Sacred when we look into the faces of our sisters and brothers. This is not always easy. It is seldom uncomplicated. But it's there. My dear old person shows me the face of that which is holy every day, and some days I am actually able to see it.

For today, it was enough to walk along the beach, taking note of the still-increasing numbers of sea turtle nests (we saw N 143 today), watching the clouds rolling out of the dark sky to the northeast, grateful for the glimpses of that which is Sacred in the sea, the wind and the small cold drops of rain that found our faces now and then.

At home, a meal came together.
If you have a gas grill here's how to make nice tender baby back ribs. (If you're a serious cook, or heaven forbid, a serious Grill Cook, you can skip this part as it will only make you laugh.) Unless you have lots of time to slow-cook ribs, this always works. Season them with salt and pepper and cook in a slow oven over a pan of water. If you have a nice gas grill you can use like an oven, do it there. Tonight I put two racks of ribs on the grill with no direct heat, cooking over a pan of water. After about 2 hours, perhaps less, put the ribs over direct heat to finish them with a nice crisping. If you have a sauce everyone agrees on, you can baste the ribs with it throughout the cooking process and certainly at the end of the process. If not, finish the ribs in individual servings to taste.

We made mashed potates in the usual way. Dylan is a master of this art, but he asked me to consult when he was nearly done: they tasted flat to him; I tasted and agreed. I tossed in a half teaspoon of kosher salt, a dash of good old Texas Pete and a big tablespoon of grated Parmesan cheese. Dylan whipped them up and we all agreed that mashed potato-ness really can be next to godliness. We have tasted it for ourselves.

A simple salad finished things off, fresh garden greens, toasted almonds or pecans, golden raisins and virtually no salad dressing. The fridge died earlier this week and was beautifully and sadly cleaned out. Beloved jars of things like tahini dressing and the dregs of pickled okra were among the victims. Still, it managed to be, as one Friend of the Blog would say, "Fit to eat". And so we are grateful, my dears.

Nest 51

Turtle season is in full swing at Guana. I did make an ill-advised promise not to bore the readers of Eat Here with this detail, and am still avoiding writing about The Spill. I can't help myself, though: this week, we noted a nest labeled "N 51". It was there Tuesday of this week, when we went to the beach as we always do for peace and comfort. It had not been there Sunday.

Judging by the tracks, we surmised the female turtle had made the long, slow, danger-frought trek Monday night during the high tide. By the time of our visit the tide had fallen way out, and the evidence of her determined incursion to the very beach, perhaps, of her own birth could be seen a long way out. I was standing at the low tide line when I took this. It's a phone camera so the quality isn't great, but you get the idea; if you look closely you can see the nest, marked that very morning by the Turtle Patrol. It's a long way from where I was standing. When I got close enough I could see a spot where it looked like she might have rested. "Oh, surely she did," Rodney said, "If you've ever seen a turtle walk up from the water and dig her nest...they look like the need to rest." And this raised another topic, one from the history we share as members of families and communities where conservation and the protection of natural resources were notions seldom considered, and when they were the tone ranged from humor to skepticism to outright sarcasm. Here's a photo found in Rodney's family archives (read: shoebox) taken in 1968 of a just-laid clutch of eggs in a turtle nest. You can't see it in this faded old second-generation photo, but they are definitely speckled, perhaps even leatherback turtle eggs. He remembers clearly seeing, more than once, turtles coming up onto the beach in the South Ponte Vedra/North Vilano area, and recalls the casual indifference of his parents and their friends as the parties carried on into the night, while the turtles fulfilled their destiny, unchanged by millennia.
Fast-forwarding to the current century (this week), this photo show the imprints of the turtle's flippers on the sand and coquina, marking her deliberate progress. I hope she laid a hundred eggs that night, and I hope those eggs beat the odds. I know I've written about it already. I know I promised not to be boring on the topic, and most of all, I know I vowed not to write about The Spill, and I won't, directly, mostly because the thought weighs too heavily for my heart to bear without wild unbounded grief: an outward and visible sign, as may resonate with you if you went to Catholic school as a kid, of our inward and spiritual positive and absolute heartbreak. But I can give you the turtles, people. I can tell you that this week saw the marking of Nest 51. Here it is, finally, right where you can walk to beach and see it yourself (with apologies to my far-away friends and readers). Rodney and I are told that the Guana Turtle patrol has marked one leatherback nest so far, and more loggerhead nests than I have numbers for. Say your best and most honest prayers to the Great Mother or God or Yahweh or the Great Spirit, or to whatever language frames and constitutes the Holiest of Holies when you lay down your head at night. Pray for the tiny, brand new and ancient beings dwelling in the small shells, nestled in the warm white sand, cradled in Nest 51, wrapped in the summer solstice.



Eat Here offers its sincere thanks to Jake, Linda, John, Scott and all the other people - employees and volunteers - who keep Guana safe for all manner of wild things, including unhatched baby turtles and people.

To walk in fields of gold

With beautiful understated eloquence, Ms. Moon has caught the thing perfectly in her new header. So while we are not talking about ensuring the safety of the walrus population, nor shoes nor ships nor sealing wax, I feel obliged to share this with you. If you were planning a trip to Florida, don't cancel. If you had an idea of some sparkling hot summer days, reading a fat paperback on a sunny beach, don't change your plans. As much as I complain about tourists (and I do; we all do - hell, it's a community pasttime here) visitors bring prosperity. And every one of them sees a treasure and is able to share the memories for years and years to come.

The photo at top right was taken yesterday at Guana Reserve just before sunset. There was almost no one on the beach; Rodney and I were walking, and a lone kite devotee was preparing to check the wind with what appeared to be a very sophisticated kite. This is what Rodney called "a field of gold" and so it seemed to be: long parallel lines of red shell, or coquina, stretching west to east, down to the low tide line. You can't see it in the photo, but every thread of shell shimmers as if it had its own careless scattering of tiny diamonds. I could squint and imagine carefully sown and tended crops, gleaming in sunlight.

But of course it's not a pastoral scene, but rather this pristine, gorgeous and under-utilized north Florida beach. If you're watching the news, or listening to NPR, it might be hard to form a picture in your mind of what things look like, here. Well, it looks like this. Those are my feet in the surf, with the clear water breaking over them and the hem of my skirt caught in the southeast breeze. The worst may be coming, but as Ms. Moon reminds us, we must cherish what we have, while we have it. It's perfectly beautiful, and as my poor photography demonstrates, can't really be captured in still shots. Come down. Bring the kids. Look for shells, shark teeth, turtle nests...whales, even: the county thinks there may be a few of them still in our waters, thanks to the long chilly spring. Come out and skimboard or swim or surf. Step into the warm, clear water and look to the horizon. You can just see the gentle curve of the earth, where the water meets the sky. If you were coming to see us, come on. And if you weren't planning to travel, maybe you should. Take joy in the present. We'll meet you at the beach.

Turtle tracks

Early June in northeast Florida. It means, as our Lorie reminds us, that it's time for gardenias to bloom, scenting gardens and front yards with such a perfume as might have been brought across endless sands and mountains in caravans of camels and traders in centuries past. Soft petals of brightest white burst into flower one after another, covering the plant, the collective perfume so powerful as to be all but visible. A single blossom, cut and placed in water, is enough to scent a room.

June means the onset of hurricane season for us, too. And this year it also heralds the onset of potential disaster we do not hazard to begin predicting, here on the east coast, at least not yet. As the pleasure of gardenia blossoms remind us of happy summers long past, of hot weather really coming, of the grass-mowing season, of long evenings and cool drinks in the shade of the oaks, so does this other, deeply alarming hint of approaching evil scent the air with something like poison. I promised I wouldn't write of it in detail here, and I won't. Thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of writers far more talented and informed than I am will take it on, have taken it on. I mention it only as a reminder of the timing and of that which is precious to all of us, and vulnerable. So: June means Turtle Season comes into full swing. This means female sea turtles find their ancient ways to ancestral homelands, lay their eggs, do their immutable part in the continuation of their species.

In the photo at the top right, you can see two sets of tracks quite clearly. Flowing down toward the ocean are those of the turtle, as she came out of the sea to find her nest site; alongside are those she made as she returned to the sea. Parallel to the breaking water are the 4-wheeler tracks made by the Guana volunteers and staff who monitor the nests and help ensure their success. The turtle clearly came up to the high (west) side of the beach during the night; the turtle folks came along shortly after daybreak to investigate. If you could see this without the limits of the photo you'd note how deeply the sand was imprinted by her flippers as she came laboriously up the beach. You'd be able to see how close alongside are the return-trip imprints.

When Rodney and I were kids our parents and their friends had parties on St. Augustine and Vilano Beach (and I'm sure the rich people in Ponte Vedra did the same thing). They'd start early, spend the day on the beach and then dig a pit, build a bonfire, boil shrimp, roast hot dogs for the kids, and stretch the parties out into the night. If a turtle came ashore to lay her eggs, people would stand around and watch. In previous generations of ignorance, people would wait for the eggs and then collect them, or excavate nest sites and steal them. One turtle egg was said to be as rich as three chicken eggs. They were a delicacy. In ignorance people prevented turtles from finding their way to their historic nesting sites, inhibiting reproductive success; in dangerous ignorance they actually prevented it. The turtles were nearly exterminated.

Conditions have improved for sea turtles. They're not ideal, of course, but in my lifetime change has occurred. People know now that turtles are disoriented by artifical light, and it's controlled by law so residents and visitors must control the ambient light on beaches at night. The nests are carefully spotted, marked and protected by law and by dedicated individuals. Some work for the State of Florida at the Guana site; others are precious volunteers. Still more are those who can afford to donate and help ensure funding for the effort. (n fact, you can, too. Adopt a sea turtle nest.)

As I've described here before, the turtle watch is so closely kept that it's possible for a nest of hatchlings to be collected on the day they hatch and released carefully after dark, helping the tiny baby turtles avoid a wide range of pitfalls. Even now only a very small percentage survive to adulthood in the wild.

It's a new moon, or it was this weekend when I took these pictures. A new moon, my friends would remind me, is the best time for planting, for sowing, for making new beginnings. And there were a LOT of new nests this weekend, and at least one attempt, documented on the left, in which a turtle made the long, difficult trek to the west and for some reason returned to the sea after nothing more than a brief rest. You can see her tracks coming and going, making a nearly perfect U-turn. Though it's hard to see in my imperfect photo, she left the imprint of her body in the sand before the long walk back. With no exaggeration, from her nose to her tail she was at least 3 feet long and she'd started life as a nestling small enough to fit into the palm of your hand. Honest. The photo of the baby turtle was taken last year, and unfortunately has no comparative object for perspective. Trust me on this: it would fit in the palm of your hand, tiny flippers and all. This one is courtesy of Tara Dodson of St. Johns County, who helps oversee the health of the turtle population in our county.



Any of a hundred things could have prevented the digging of the nest, the laying of the eggs. It could be that the nest site wasn't just right for her. Maybe she wasn't quite ready to lay her eggs; maybe she walked back down to the breakers and came back later that night, or the next night. Maybe she found a better spot. I'd have to ask someone with more knowledge of the habits of sea turtles even to make an educated guess. Something kept this turtle from digging this nest. But there's good news. The nests are numbered in order of their discovery. And I can tell you for sure that before last weekend, the highest number Rodney and I saw on a nest was 10. Tonight we saw one numbered 23. Here are the tracks, leading up to the high tide line and back, obviously inspected by our turtle patrol as you can see from the overlaid track marks.

We watched something called "Through the Wormhole" on one of the science channels the other night. It provided several theories for the origin of the universe, including one based in physics and described in elegant equations, one based on theological contemplation, and one (intriguingly) based on the hypothesis that out of left-brain anxiety about the end of existence is born a right-brain counter balance in which the brain creates a sense of the spiritual, a belief in holiness, by which that anxiety is alleviated. One theory, however, is positively Gene Roddenberry-esque. It proposes that we are all the creations of an elaborate entertainment, the brain children of ourselves sometime in the future. Leaving aside religion for the moment, this last is ineffably appealing to me. It implies, as Roddenberry's Star Trek did, a hope for the future, a belief that we are somehow able to save ourselves from ourselves. If it turns out to be true, perhaps we are somehow able to save our sea turtles from ourselves, as well. Hope springs, my dears.




Credits:
Baby turtle photo - Tara Dodson, St. Johns County Environmenal staff member

Of memorials and solitary work

For the past couple of years there's been an informal memorial up at Guana Reserve, almost at the northernmost point of the beach. I've written about The Monument before. It's been called "Rodney's memorial", not for my husband Rodney, but for a man we used to call "Segway guy", an older man with long grey ponytail and a long, pointed beard, riding his Segway on the beach, looking like a biker with a really unexpected ride. When we finally talked to him we all laughed: not only was his name Rodney, too, but he is married to a woman named Angie. We haven't seen him in a few months but didn't worry because we know cold weather keeps him off the beach. But there may be another reason we haven't seen him: the memorial has been taken down. It's just one of those things, but it's kind of sad. It was, as I've said, a form of organic, living art. More than that, it was a form of dialogue, a discussion, a conversation without words. We'll all miss it. It's been gone for several weeks now.

Its voice was present this Memorial Day weekend, though. Sally, a retriever mix who barks her head off at Rodney (my Rodney) every weekend and of whom we're very fond, was there Sunday. This is their beach spot. Sally's person had marked the spot with a small American flag. It was a solitary marker, standing in the stead of that larger reminder, but it spoke as loudly.

I was thankful for solitary work being done for its own sake and for solitary work becoming less less so, as in this place. It used to be that writing a memoir or recollection, an autobiographical sketch or short story intended for any publisher who might be willing to accept it was lonely work, indeed. But here, where my voice is my own, the work is lightened by other writers, reading, calling out encouragement from their distances, implying interest by their very continued reading.
The water sparkled with diamond lights, the spilling oil kept its distance. Guana's other familiars like Sally and her person, and our friends Brian and Kathy, shared greetings and understanding, spoken and silent. The day did not end before those distant called greetings were heard: Michelle H., from the far north; Miss Jo from our own backyard, almost. And finally Mac, who started and ended the day with joy. Sleep well, everyone.

The best nest, with no dreams of darkness

Remember when I told you about the Wren Family, a couple of weeks ago? It was part of this post and included a description of the location of Chez Wren. Wrens are opportunistic nesters, known for building nests in boots you leave on the back porch or wheelbarrows left untended for more than 10 minutes or so. This particular family has once again built a nest in a sandblaster, in a very high-traffic area of our garage. And since I told you about the nest, the eggs have hatched and four perfect tiny wrens are waiting for their parents to deliver supper. In this photo you can see a hint of what Rodney tells me is more properly called a sandblasting cabinet, in which the nest has been built. The black material around the nest is where you would put your right hand if you were using the machine. Well, it's where you'd put your right hand if you were a PERSON using the machine. Clearly the Wren Children are using the machine in avian fashion.

Beginning a long weekend, Rod and I went to the beach. I took pictures and thought about people just like me along the Gulf Coast, who love a stretch of beach or brackish wetland as fiercely as I do Guana and are now almost certainly unable to think of anything but approaching darkness in the form of a black plague of oil. If I am honest with you and with myself, I have to admit to pushing away thoughts of the coming disaster. I can hardly bear to think of it. It is too horrible, too enormous, too inevitable now. My heart breaks for those people and for us, for we are all sure to feel the evil touch of this horror. But I'll leave the writing about this to better pens than my own. I am not its equal, and I know it.

Still, even in the face of the unimaginable, life does go on. Wonder of wonders, we've been given a window into its magic: look!
You can see the four small birds, snuggled into their bit of unlikely real estate, sleepily waiting for their parents to bring food. Their tiny feathers are still sprouting, their tiny wings just being wiggled, though it will only be a matter of days now before they are fledged and cheerily calling to one another as they fly between the trees and drink from the little fountain on the back porch. We had a bad moment as we set up to take a quick photo with as little upset as possible to Chez Wren. The babies were perfectly still, almost too still. Rod touched the cabinet gently, checking for signs of life and in that instant all the beaks opened widely for incoming food. How to Reach Adulthood Without Being Eaten, by Our Baby Wrens: perfect, still silence while your parents are away from the nest, balanced by immediate readiness for food when your parents return. When the movement they felt proved not to be a parent and a meal, they returned to stillness in a heartbeat and we stepped away, leaving them to wait.



Photos courtesy of Rodney Christensen

Nesting turtles, surfing dogs

This is the first sea turtle nest of the season for Rodney and me. (Grateful acknowledgement to Tyrone and Louise: his post this morning provided the inspiration). Despite tragedy (the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico), personal and professional ups and downs (everybody's got 'em) and anything else that may not be right with the world, here's something that is: turtles are still making their ungainly trips ashore in our beautiful Guana and everywhere else they have for millions of years, and laying eggs. And despite financial cutbacks and governmental balance sheet discomfort, the state of Florida with its badly paid staff and dedicated volunteers, is still managing to arrive in the early morning hours and mark the sacred places where the turtles have been. And despite the challenges these tiny baby turtles face when they hatch (lights on the beach confuse them and prevent them finding their way to the ocean, predators eat them, and old-timers will still raid the nests, for it is said that turtle eggs are 5 or 6 times richer than chicken eggs) some of these tiny vulnerable babies do manage to make their ways to the sea, and return again many years later to continue the cycle.

The folks at Guana keep such a close eye on these nests and know so well the time at which the eggs are expected to hatch that they monitor for viability, even sometimes removing the tiny new hatchlings in the evenings and returning them to the beach after nightfall. This gives the babies better odds of surviving their long trip to the water. The nests, as I've tried to show you here, are above the high tide line. Hatchlings must negotiate a wide stretch of beach to reach the water, and each of them is so small as to be able to fit easily in the palm of your hand. It's a considerable distance to cover, with all the obstacles I've mentioned and probably many more I don't even know about. It is indeed a joyful thing to see the protective markers appearing each spring, reminding us that the secret life of turtles goes on and and that in some small way, people are helping ensure this continuity.

Our other unexpected and welcome entertainment came from two nice surfers, a couple, I guessed, and their dog. We passed these folks as we stepped onto the beach this morning, exchanged greetings and commented on their dog, a medium-sized retreiver, and then moved on. We always talk to dog people at the beach, usually because it's too warm to take our own dogs. Boxers have foreshortened noses and sometimes encounter breathing or overheating issues when it's really hot out. Temperatures today were predicted to be in the high 80s, maybe touching 90, so we'd left our dogs at home. We set off on our walk, noticing that the couple with the dog moved away from the knot of people who typically cluster around the walkover. And then we indulged our passion and looked for shark teeth and other bits of bounty from the ocean. About 3/4 of a mile into the walk, I noticed the young couple headed toward the water, boards in hand, dog trotting faithfully along. Then I noticed that the guy was carrying his own board and something that might have been a boogie board. Hmm. There was a nice bed of coquina, usually rich with shark teeth, so I lingerd to look as Rodney continued on his walk.


And here's the fun part: the boogie board was for the dog. I watched as the dog maneuvered himself into position to climb up on the board, a process that seemed completely routine to the little family. Curious, I stopped to watch, my phone camera ready to take terrible pictures (which it totally did, as you can see). When they were far enough out to catch some of the ragged waves, the dog caught his, rode it, lost his board, and promptly paddled out to the guy, whose surfboard seemed to be his next objective. But the guy caught a decent wave and rode it as the woman finished a ride in. I'd lingered long enough by now, and taken enough photos, to suggest the possibility that I was just a freak. And clearly attention wasn't important to them; they just took their dog surfing and didn't invest a lot of effort in overthinking.

The photo just shows the heads of the people and the suggestion of the dog's head. But I went back to talk to them, to tell them about the blog, to ask if I might include them. Her name was Beth; her husband is Steve and the dog, Yeti, has been surfing with Steve since he was a puppy. Except Beth said, "I noticed him swimming along with me, and sort of shooed him toward my husband. But he just likes surfboards now, so he didn't mind surfing with me." She says he surfs better with Steve, but no matter who's board finds him hanging 20, it was a bunch of fun to watch. Here's to that much fun throughout the weekend.

Just down to the sea, and back again

The ocean makes its own observance of the changing seasons. At beautiful Guana right now, this translates into a great deal of sugar-fine sand being moved by the tides, new lines and ridges being created with each rise and fall, and new veins of coquina exposed. All the while the water shimmers and sparkles, lightened by silica, casting a glamour over the whole timeless process. It is at once as slow and as instantaneous as the opening of flowers, but we watch through the hours we can: the waves come to us, pushing us to the west and then recede and often render glimmering treasures in the form of shark teeth. These relics remind us of the reality of time, many coming from 3 million years ago, rare finds going back 30 or 40 million years ago, or more. In the coquina, the redshell I've shown here, I might find 10 or 20 or sometimes even a hundred shark teeth in a day at the beach. Rodney, who walks along with his metal detector, focused on the search and freed, for those moments, from the chronic pain I can only vaguely imagine, will often find even more.

Sometimes we find even more exotic relics of evolutionary pre-history. They are, for me, as puzzling and intriguing as those shape-sorting benches my siblings used to play with as teensy-pots. Shaped like a small wooden work bench with openings into which various brightly painted wooden blocks would fit, my brother and sisters learned to place the red cylinder into the right opening, the blue star into the right one, and so on. Many years on, I find myself looking at these shiny black or blue shapes, beautifully glossy and polished by fossilization and perhaps being tumbled like jewels in the waves of the ocean. There are discernible patterns into which I'm able to sort the pieces, but the identification of those patterns continues to elude me, to elude Rodney, to intrigue and entertain us both.


This one, pictured with my toes alongside for perspective, might be something like the tooth of a horse or related, prehistoric equine relative, or perhaps that of another herbivore. I'm not sure, though I'm not alone in dreaming of one day walking into the office of a prominent paleontologist at, say, the University of Florida, and dumping the whole disorganized collection on his or her desk: Tell me, I might say. Tell me what all these fascinating puzzle pieces add up to. (Get out of here, I can imagine him or her saying, you crazy person, you.) But it wouldn't matter, really. The puzzle isn't really the riddle. It's not the riddle at all.

The riddle is chronic pain, and finding some combination of medications and choices and lifestyle things that provide alleviation even for some small measure of hours. The riddle is how to continue to walk through life with dignity and peace when things we often take for granted have gone from us. For a person whose brain and capacity for logic and problem-solving have been connected throughout his professional life in his work, this is no small riddle. Most heart-rending of all? There is no real solution to the problem. There is no surgery, no treatment, no acupuncture or massage or medicine to provide a cure. There is only figuring out How Do We Live With This, a problem that, in its most basic sense, is being faced by countless people every day. And my guess is those people may have to work through without the inspiration of pals like Ms. Moon and The Surly Writer; Suldog, for consistent humor, and many others, none of whom, it should be noted, write for Inspirational Purposes (ewww) but all of whom are skilled at keeping us grounded and reminding us what really matters. And there are way too many more, my loves, than can be listed here, but their voices are beyond price at Eat Here.

And in the end, here is the man who walks down to the sea with me, in so many ways, and has walked for more than 20 years of our lives. And I walk with him, maybe now more than ever. Down to the sea, my dears. And back again.

Spring babies for swallow-tailed kites (and the rest of us)

When spring really comes, the birds come with it. I've written about the the robins, who lingered this year because of the long, cool spring in the southeast. Besides their annual arrival and departure, there are several other species in which we take careful interest. We note the details informally but with care, mentioning to my friend Sue that the painted bunting arrived, or watching as our pal Pablo posts a photo of one or another denizen of the Anastasia Island bird feeder. Some of them are annual visitors like the painted and indigo buntings and the goldfinches, and others are more specialized. The swallow-tailed kites are among the special visitors, endangered in some states (including South Carolina) and protected in others. Their federal status is "species of concern". The excellent site of the Fish & Wildlife Service gives state-by-state detail and generally refers to these glorious fliers as "imperiled". Have you ever seen one of these birds? Their stunning elegance in flight takes your breath at first. And when you realize there are less than 3,000 of these birds...well, remember the North Atlantic Right Whale?

I keep a rough notebook going back several years, noting the unusual sightings. Beginning in 2006, Rodney and I spotted (and Rod photographed) a family of swallow-tailed kites. We've seen these birds for years but '06 was the first year in which we noticed what seemed like spring courting behavior. In April and May of that year, we watched as the family group expanded from 2 birds to 4. We watched, quite amazed, as the family flew together in great, beautiful circles and ellipses, constantly calling to one another. This was new to us; we'd seen kites alone and in pairs for years, but only very seldom heard them calling to each other. This was different. This was virtually constant sound: "I'm here. Come this way. Here is food. I am here, I am here, I am here..." It sounded like the talk of almost any species capable of vocalization within the range of human hearing. Apparently, kites in family groups raising fledglings (we guessed), relied on vocalizations as heavily as some other species.

This year we began to see (and hear) the mating pair a couple of weeks ago. Their sharp, unmistakable voicings became more frequent and insistent in the past week or so, and this morning I was awakened by the clear sound of the family talking among itself. Rod took this photo, in which he captured 3 of the 4 individuals, in the perfect blue light of this April afternoon.
They're soaring above the Spanish-moss laden oak trees bordering Stokes Creek at the back of our land, and Rodney thought they might have been flying at stunning speeds as they coasted across the thermal air currents and dove through the clear air in pursuit of small prey. Most of the bird books we have seem clear about the on-the-wing lifestyle of swallow-tailed kites; they seem to do almost everything in aerobic acrobatic fashion. They hunt, eat and drink in flight. They court and mate in flight. And they create messy, indifferent nests in which to lay their eggs, presumably because the lure of flight is too irresistible to allow them to dawdle over prosaic details like construction.

And they are positively stunning to watch in the air they seem unable to resist. They inspire. They lure. My own spring fever has been fanned by the fabulous weather and the calling of the kites so that my mind wanders outdoors at every opportunity. Well, in fairness and honesty, the kites aren't singularly responsible. The long winter has given cautiously into spring. Redbud trees have opened with reservation. Some wisteria I've been monitoring with distant affection for years has just emerged, including some along U.S. 1, where the road is under construction and paths are being re-routed. Even the Gatorbone Studios dogwood, I am told, has opened only after long, serious boardroom meetings in which all considerations were weighed, but it would seem that the decision is irrevocably made and the tiny white flowers are beginning to show their faces.

So my dear friends, my teachers: what calls you to spring this year? What makes your heart soar with the kites? What beckons from your window, and pulls you to the change of season? If you've been listening on the sidelines, it would mean the world to hear from you. Do tell. Love, love.




Photo credits: Both photos of kites in this post are (c) Rodney Christensen 2010

Easter: azaleas, waterways and swingtime

We're not vegetarians and we're not even very good Catholics but we do know an excellent holiday dinner when it presents itself. And we don't ignore meals that promise to serve as lunch for the following week. With Mac away in Connecticut this year, I didn't have the heart to make the glazed ham he loves. So I made homemade baked macaroni and cheese (which, by the way, he dislikes rather strongly), and we heaped up piles of salad on our plates, topped with fresh (Plant City!) strawberries and sliced almonds, carefully toasted in our oven. We had mandarin oranges, golden raisins and feta cheese as salad topping options.

There are deviled eggs, egg salad and just plain old boiled eggs in the fridge so we don't lose sight of the festival's heart which is, after all, to speak of fertility. To ancient (and not-so-ancient) people, the vernal equinox had significance to the Goddess as the returning light meant the hope of abundant crops; it was an affirmation of life. In the Christian calendar, Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring after the vernal equinox. The ancient Egytians built the Sphinx so that it faces the rising sun on the very day of the spring equinox. There is powerful energy here, in my opinion, no matter what your personal language of spirituality. And there is poweful magic in homemade macaroni and cheese, and I mean no irreverence. Really.

For more evidence that Easter's tidings are upon us, the azaleas have finally burst into color. A long, chilly spring has made them reluctant to open their faces to the sun, but here they are, at last. (You already know this if you visit here often or if you live in a garden zone analagous to Zone 9A. I'm sorry for boring those of you who already have azaleas blooming at home.) Here they are along our fenceline, their deep fuschia colors looking glamorous in the golden light of late afternoon. All the plants along our driveway were rescued by Rodney when someone else thought they were dead. He planted them and carefully nurtured them until one spring they burst into this astonishing display of color. We've never looked back. But wait. That's not the best of spring in St. Augustine.

Here's even better evidence: the rope swing at the back of our property. To our endless joy and amazement, we live at the tiny, occasionally tidally navigable point where land meets the narrow Stokes Creek and spills out to the Tolomato River, almost directly across from our much-loved Guana. The Tolomato River is the western boundary of Guana and part of the the Intracoastal Waterway. Water flowing into the river becomes part of the ICW and eventually pours into the Atlantic Ocean.

Long before it gets there, it is overhung by water oaks and live oaks, one of which (at our house) is draped with a long, thick rope. It's a type of rope called "hawser" in nautical terms, which means it's nearly as thick as my wrist and certainly heavy enough to carry my fat butt from our bank out across the marsh for a roller-coaster-like head rush and the best view of the grass river you can see without being in a boat. That's the academic description, of course. Once you get past that, you'll just see Rodney laughing, joyfully weightless, reflected in the thin stream of water on the edge of the marsh. It's not a bad reminder of spring, albeit less elegant that the Pyramids or the Easter Vigil or even a gorgeous Easter bonnet. It's a fine Easter reminder, indeed. Sometimes the boundary that sets apart our spiritual wellness is blurred positively by physical pain. When my dear old friend Carrie was dying this was very much how it looked to me. For other people in other circumstances, the blurry line takes on a faint taste of bitterness and one's reach to peace is harder and less forgiving; perhaps this whole equation is harder to resolve when the situation is indefinite. The rope swing lets me see someone I love, released from any worries or pain or concern: this is a vision of resurrection we can all believe in.

Finally, this week Adam comes home to Katie, to his mother and his father, to celebrate spring (and a WEDDING!) and love. He's an unlikely Easter bunny. Come to think of it, he's an absurd Easter bunny. But there it is, no more weird and unbalanced than any other part of our wacky lives. Happy Easter, everyone.

Conversational citizens

Our friend Louise is officially a citizen of Canada! She's coming home as we speak (she and her husband are on assignment in Florida), having passed whatever test it is they give, and presumably produced a rendering of "O Canada" sufficient to permit the issuing of citizenship papers. They made you sing, right, Louise? In recent years we've had several friends who became American citizens, having come to the U.S. from Switzerland, Costa Rica, Syria and India, and now are very proud to welcome Louise to our continent, if not our country, exactly.

Our unlikely connection to Louise and Tyrone is rooted in work but has flowered in a surprising way. Tyrone seemed like a person I'd want as a friend because he shamelessly wore grey Chuck Taylors to the office. Louise eclipsed him, of course, immediately. Together, they are The North American Right Whale Spotters of 2010, for my money, having sighted multiple whales several times off the beach. They were able to report the sightings, helping support the re-establishment of this extremely endangered species, of which perhaps only 350 or 400 individuals inhabit the earth. They are dog people who understand the language of dogs, and are loved by every dog they meet. In the unusual magic that connects people to each other in St. Augustine, they happened to choose our dear friend Eric at Antigua Vets to care for their dog. And they are intrepid, warm-hearted people who can be tossed into virtually any social situation and find their way to a comfortable place. Good job, Canada.

There are the people with whom you cautiously build friendships, and there are people you pass at the beach with whom you exchange greetings, and then there are people who pass silently and yet not without contact. Thanks to our frequent visits to Guana, those people in the second category are more numerous than you might think; two Saturdays ago I walked up to The Woman in the Black Bathing Suit on the beach. I hadn't seen her during the winter. I said, "Is it Kathy and Brian?" and she said, "How did you ever remember??" and we caught up with each other. She took out her phone and made a note about our names and the blog address. I hope she'll find us here. (Brian was with her, but he was busily searching for shark teeth, so I didn't interrupt him. The beach is sacred that way.) I may have mentioned the woman we used to see last summer, who asked me, "Do you always leave your shoes at the walkover?" When I answered that I did, she smiled and said, "I can always tell when you're here by your shoes," and we laughed about it. I haven't thought about it in some time. But yesterday was a truly amazing day for marine fauna. There was that big old conch or whelk or whatever it calls itself, which I'd carefully removed from the water for a photo and to show Rodney and then just as carefully replaced. There was the sand dollar.

And there were two couples walking on the beach, taking photos, probably tourists. They took notice of me in their own ways, the older couple perhaps wondering if they could get me to take a photo of them together, the younger couple just sitting in the sand in their good clothes, letting the sun warm them. None of them spoke, but all four of them made eye contact. All of them were interested, as I was, in the abundant wonders of nature, but none of them dared a conversation so Rodney and I walked on up the beach a mile or so and then back. But when I bent over to pick up my old Chuck Taylors, there was the conversation I thought no one had dared.
There were my shoes, but into the heel of one of them had been tucked a gift. It couldn't have been accidental. By design, someone said very clearly, "I thought you might like this," and I thought they must have seen me carrying the whelk/conch shell. The one left in my shoe hadn't had a resident for a long time, could be taken home without the guilty scent of life, interrupted, and was perfectly formed. The people I passed without comment that day didn't step into our lives quite like Tyrone and Louise did, but they didn't pass without a conversation, either. What a world we live in.

Spring Fever

It's late and I'm tired, but I find I can't sleep without sharing some Spring with you. A deadly case of spring fever infected me today, and I sort of lost my mind. Because of the lateness of the spring, my sweet little violets are still in bloom so I took yet another photo to show you. And then I realized that the phrase "riotous color" must have been born when some flamboyant writer came upon spring azaleas for the first time.

Rodney and I took off this afternoon for an unexpected walk on the beach, and some magical combination of the change in seasons and the astronomical tide created a very low tide for the time of year, the lowest we've seen since last summer. The water was clear and there was a long, shallow lake on our side of a sand bar, created by the water trapped at the low tide. I found a couple of treasures, including a conch or whelk or whatever those things are, with a gorgeously slug-like creature at home. I took a picture and put it back in the water. And then (maybe a reward from on high?) I found a whole, living sand dollar. I haven't seen one of those outside a tourist shop since I was a kid. I really wanted to keep it, but Rodney pointed out that it was alive. Again, I took a picture and put it back in the extravagantly blue ocean. You can't see it in the photo; the light was shifting in the late afternoon and the shadows were tricky, but there is a very fine growth of fuzzy fauna on one side of the sand dollar. It looks like the fine short hair some babies have when they're born, the stuff that grieves you when it falls out. What a lovely thing it was to find. There was more - we found some very cool sharks' teeth and so on, but this was what I couldn't sleep without sharing.

Some folks I know are passing through a terrible trial right now; a great tragedy has been visited upon them. Without sharing the details, it's made me reflect long and hard about how fragile everything is. The delicate tissue that holds our lives together is so easy to think of as muscular and resilient. Perhaps in some ways, it is. But it can be so breakable, so brittle and almost impossible to put back together. Hold your babies tight, my loves. Love them all you can. Take them out into the spring sunshine and sit on a blanket as the air begins to warm. Say your prayers, wish your wishes, speak to your God or Goddess, guardian angel or higher power, and count your blessings. It is Spring, and the light has come again.