Cityscape, Seascape

For many years the background in my life was a near constant rush of people moving against a neon and concrete cityscape, sights and sounds always shaped by the human element in action with an architecture of steel and stone. But sight and sound are vastly different now and several months in a small town coastal setting has altered my perception of that around me and I have come to see sand, ocean and sky with the same degree of clarity that once defined a view of Tokyo. According to the calendar the days have tilted toward spring, season of my arrival in Florida last year. Not quite a full cycle of days and seasons since that arrival, but the one-year mark is drawing near and sights around here begin to look familiar, begin to show a hint of the colors and textures I remember from my first month at the beach. It’s clear to me now that whatever tilt the earth and season take along this windy southern coast the palette is constantly shifting in ways that require more than casual observation to gain the fullest appreciation. Winter has faded from the ocean water off this coastline and deep currents of blue-green have returned, swelling up from the south and bringing to the ocean a look of verdigris, a color I remember from my first week here last May. Along with that are bleached white ruffles of foamy surf spilling clean onto the sand. During these days of spring break and larger numbers of beachgoers, swimmers with a tolerance for cold water are not in short supply, though most recoil from the shock of a chilly 66°. No signs yet of the cumulous cloud heaps that characterize warmer days, but at least the gelid skies of January have given over to what could be called a spring blue. On this Saturday we’ve had to make do with thin striations of white cloud all high above the horizon. A pretty sight this afternoon, three vintage planes flying in low formation back and forth across a long stretch of greeny ocean stirred by the play of dolphins, seven in all. For long weeks the beach has every day been an unsullied reach of pure white, with rarely so much as a dropped drinking straw. So too have the numbers of jellyfish washed ashore grown small. For consecutive days I walked my three miles without sight of more than one or two stranded jellyfish, a mere scattering of shells and complete absence of litter. The last part of that description has changed with the crowds arriving over spring break. Litter is to be expected from children on holiday with parents in holiday mode and relaxed discipline. On the good side, we are fortunate to have regular patrols of trash handlers who do an excellent job. For reasons I can’t explain, the pelicans have been flying in record numbers, more than I can recall ever seeing before. Is it a late March-early April phenomenon? What makes the usual summer flock of about ten, swell to three times that in early spring? I watched a line of almost twenty earlier today flying in a staggered line, six inches above the water without a wingbeat. What once was a city-mapped perception of the scene around me has now become attuned to landscape on a different scale. I enjoy now a slowly developing appreciation of the monthly changes in this oceanfront environment I still call new.

Death Takes No Holidays

With all the severe and mostly miserable weather affecting much of the country over the past couple of weeks, it seems almost spiteful to bring up Florida weather conditions. True, here in the near tropical clime of central and southern Florida there is little to complain of weather-wise. Not to say that every day here is sunshine and shorts. On one day this week I walked an hour on the beach in T-shirt and shorts and the very next day shivered under my sweater, pullover and jacket along that same stretch of beach. Certainly not Chicago, but then neither is it Rio.

Friday was another of the cold days and one with not a lot of sunshine. Definitely felt like winter all day long. As far as walking on the beach goes, time and stubbornness have hardened me to some degree and short of a thundering downpour, some time in the day will find me plodding along the sand. So I bundled up this afternoon and struck out. Didn’t even have time to settle into a pace before coming upon one of those disturbing but inevitable sometime sights in nature’s coastal preserve. First thought was, “Why isn’t that bird scrambling to get out of my path?” Well, the unfortunate creature was beyond flight, and very near beyond any movement at all. It was a young male pelican. Standing a mere three feet away, I watched his final strength draining out on the sand, a once magnificent bird unaware of all outside the final struggle for life, unseeing of the tall human bulk looming over him. His head slowly drooped to the sand and then just as slowly struggled up again. With legs stretched behind him in an ungainly spill, I began to feel like a peeping Tom intruding on the bird’s closing battle. I moved on down the beach.

For the past week or more there’s been here on the central east coast what they call a bloom of jellyfish. This time it’s the cannonball jellyfish and the surf line is dotted with numbers of them washed ashore. From the first appearance of these odd-looking blobs I’ve been struck by how much they resemble the one-man fighter planes of the type flown by Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. Odd thing is, these are edible “fighter planes” considered a delicacy in Japan. But hold on, it’s not likely to see anyone picking up these interesting jellyfish to munch on.

The cannonball jellyfish, sometimes called a cabbage head jellyfish, despite being a good swimmer sometimes washes up on beaches in large numbers. The shape is almost what you would expect a futuristic plane to look like. It has the stealth bomber type of graceful flaring wings and a circle of “thruster jets” at the back. Naturally, in the water the ‘wings’ become an umbrella shape with the ‘thruster’ becoming short stingers or nematocysts. Some books will describe the cannonball as bluish or yellowish with a brown border. Those here on Florida’s east coast are clear and uncolored apart from a reddish border and reddish stingers. The reference books describe them as sometimes reaching seven inches in diameter. Many of the New Smyrna Beach cabbage heads are eight to ten inches in diameter. The good news is, a cannonball jellyfish has only a mild sting and brushing against one in the water won’t usually result in a sting. As for eating the jellyfish, bear in mind that it must be harvested alive and healthy and prepared properly. Dried is the most common method.

Two photos show what looks likes like healthy (at one time) specimens.

Forty minutes after first seeing the unfortunate pelican, I passed him again on the way back. Struggles over, he was at peace finally in some other plane.

The Democracy of Nature

Not every walk on the beach holds promise of sights that inspire or elicit praise of nature’s beauty. It is at times a cruel environment that on occasion exhibits a reminder of the axiom, ‘survival of the fittest.’ In these human eyes life at the water’s edge is often viewed through a perspective perhaps a shade romantic and far from the up close reality of the life forms that call it home. In another world our textbooks and politicians talk about democracy, but those words and descriptions bear little resemblance to the true democracy of nature. For here, in the natural world beyond human intervention is real democracy, one that recognizes no distinctions in the turning of its coils, that cares little for weakness, kindness or empathy, and goes about its business as casually as we would swat a fly.

More than once I have written of my enchantment with the pelicans that soar up and down this beach day after day unending. To my eye and my understanding of the concept, their flight exemplifies perfect grace, and there is never a time when I might ignore their overhead passage, or their long low glides over the ocean’s surface.

I have heard that for pelicans aging is especially unkind, that blindness followed by starvation is too often their fate. The daily and countless dives into salt water eventually destroy their vision, leaving them helpless to find fish and feed themselves. But here again is the survival of the fittest.

Today I came upon a recently dead young pelican. From the appearance of the bird, a male, he had died there on the beach no more than four or five hours earlier. The wind was strong and blown sand had layered much of his body, but there was nothing to indicate a frailness or cause of death. As I approached, a vulture, itself sleek and handsome and unlike its ugly cousins elsewhere, was pulling at the pelican. He flew off, but some time later on my return northward, it had come back and called its mate as well, the two of them busy over the pelican’s body.

In his poem “Out, Out—”Robert Frost wrote: ‘No more to build on there. And they since they were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.’ Words that sound unfeeling, but reminding us that in certain things we are helpless.

So I left the pelican to his fate, turning for home.