Elegy for Catfish

A walk on the beach in Florida can take on a multitude of shapes. Depending upon such influences as sun, wind, rain, tides and season, the fundamental trio of ocean, beach and sky shifts daily through a cycle of patterns ongoing in their variety. Just when you think you’ve recognized something predictable in the daily scene, a twist in the weather brings on a sudden surprise in the tenor of that walk on the beach.

This week the twist is cold ocean water and its effect upon catfish and snook. In daily walks the past few days I have seen an increasing number of catfish washed up on the beach, some newly dead, others half picked over by scavenging birds. Not nearly as many, but the same is true of snook. My initial thought was that the phenomenon is related to the temperature of the ocean. A call to the New Smyrna Beach Wildlife Services confirmed that guess. According to the person I spoke to, from Flagler Beach south to Vero Beach, a stretch of about 100 miles, the ocean temperature this week is low enough to cause shock among catfish and snook. The shock disables the fish as far as swimming goes, leaving them helpless against tide and surf. Thrown onto the beach they are stranded at the surf line, quickly becoming a fresh dish at the grand and sandy beach buffet for birds. Onshore temperatures have been higher the past three days and birds are more numerous now. Their numbers though are still too few to handle the large influx of beached fish. For the time being, what you see are many fish only half-eaten. But this environment, whatever the season is supremely efficient in processing the non-living, and the passage of several days will find a beach cleansed of these partially eaten carcasses.

As for us two-legged creatures who frequent the beach, temperatures are back in the 60s and 70s, and the walking is optimum, if a little ghoulish with the sight of so many eyeless fish heads.

Morning Quiet

The house is quiet early in the morning, unmoving except for a faint churning of mechanical heat somewhere behind walls. One of several cats stalks a moving shadow, slinking soundlessly between chair legs and stacks of books. Now and then comes the hiss and rush of a passing car on the street outside, or the dry crackle of newspaper pages turning, Miz Dee moving from South La. Business to People, seated in a pool of brightening light, her face and coffee cup silhouetted against the glass. From my place among these sofa cushions is a view out onto the 6:30 chill of a patio table still scattered with the leftover tokens of last night’s patio madness. Some bottles and glasses, an empty pack of cigarettes, a candle or two, and the errant leaf blown from the Bradford Pear, now floating with curled edges in a half-glass of beer. In this season the brick tiles are half covered with fallen leaves, a red-brown scatter jostled and shifting in the movement of November air. Birds are few this morning only because their special mix of thistle and sunflower seeds is still in unopened bags, and the feeders are empty of even the last half-hidden morsels. They seem faithless creatures deserting the garden at the first twinge of hunger.

My first full day in town yesterday was a blunt force reminder of the traffic that has characterized Baton Rouge in the aftermath of Katrina. People here will tell you that it all began with the grand exodus from New Orleans before and after the hurricane, and is exacerbated by a lack of infrastructure in the city’s street plan. Wednesday saw me driving in parts of town that I remember as wooded land, but now seethes with service roads, ramps and high speed car chases. Oddly enough the route I followed turned out to be easier than the directions, though it never provided an escape from the hot metal stricture of a thousand moving cars.

In only two days I seem to have become a familiar figure to the neighborhood walkers. For the second morning I encountered a small cast of jogger-walkers, most of whom offer a wave and a friendly smile. While only a few streets away the stream of traffic keeps air heated and grainy, in the virtual forest of Old Goodwood a wealth of green and fewer cars work to keep the air crisp and fresh. It must be related to the concrete surface, but I am walking faster here a distance equal to the Florida walks. Maybe it’s the new shoes.

Raymond’s lagniappe…

‘Summer nights here in Baton Rouge trucks from the Louisiana Department of Insect Control hiss between houses and apartment buildings along adjoining streets, the compressor on the back shooting out a white spray like seeds from the crooked funnel of a harvester. A yellow light flashes on the top of the truck in a neighborhood where once lightning bugs blinked and flitted along childhood streets and among bushes and in treetops, and sometimes die only when caught and their glow smeared across the front of T-shirts.

— excerpt from Southern Snapshots

A Cold Radiance

Woke this morning to find that someone had flipped the calendar ahead about three weeks. No, I didn’t open my eyes to turkey and dressing and pumpkin pie, but rather biting cold and ferocious wind. Three steps from bed and I decided these tile floors are out of season, and jumped for the slippers.

Outside, over the water a special light show was in play, and despite the early morning cold and hard-blowing wind, I grabbed the camera and ran to take some photos. I did manage to get five or six pictures, but my state of half dress in the windy cold made it hard to get a steady shot. Not completely satisfied with the photos, but I believe the radiated light at least comes across.

The surf was tumbling too close to the sea wall and walking wasn’t an option. Near lunchtime the tide receded and the water calmed enough to make a walk look good. And so it was for the most part. But walking south with the wind at my back turned into an almost jog. I felt like I was on a treadmill with the speed set too fast and the track running away from me. When I finally turned back, heading north, I was walking face on into what seemed like a wind machine in overdrive, a hand on my chest pushing me back.

A cold beach in driving wind still has its particular beauty, but it’s all a new scene for me, and a reminder that some winter shopping is on the horizon.

Soundtrack

One of my favorite books of some year past is Rohinton Mistry’s epic novel of Bombay, during India’s state of emergency in the mid 1970s, A Fine Balance. I read the book shortly after it came out in 1995, but as I sometimes do with special books, I reread this one over the past week. I won’t say much about the book now, other than to recommend it, and to share a favorite paragraph near the end of the book’s 600 pages…

‘As he spoke, he absently pulled out a fountain pen, unscrewed the cap, and put the nib to his nose. She watched, perplexed, as each nostril in turn was pressed shut and the ink fragrance inhaled deeply. Fortified by his fix of Royal Blue, he continued…’

• • • • • • • •

About the only exercise I stick with these days is walking. While in Japan I had the long, almost endless walking path along the blossom strewn Kanda River, which I took frequent advantage of. Now in Florida and on the beach, I have another superb walking environment just outside my door. There isn’t a lot I can call established or routine about my days here now, but one regime apart from the daily blog post is a three-mile early morning walk on the beach. Somehow, I hold onto that discipline doggedly and never falter in covering my daily distance on the clean white sands of NSB.

There aren’t a great many people on the beach when I go out for a walk, but most of the nine or ten I pass are like me, getting in their own time of exercise. The sounds around me, the surf, winds and birdcalls are as much a part of the experience as the movement of feet and legs. Everyone is different, and some people I pass are walking to the beat of an iPod, or following the distracted cadence of a cell phone conversation. I tried the iPod walk once, but didn’t care for the wall it put up between me and the natural setting. And I do walk with a cell phone in my pocket, just in case, but it would be a rare instance for a phone call to shatter the sanctity of those three miles walking south, feet skirting the surf.

I am trying to learn the names of the common birds, and already know a few of them, like the ever present oystercatchers and white ibis. Earlier pages in the blog have explained my fascination with brown pelicans.

My denuded Japanese iPhone still has a few useful functions, and one of them is a pedometer, which keeps a history of distance walked, time, steps and calories burned. It now tells me I’ve walked thirty-seven miles of white sand since the first outing twelve days ago.

I’m looking forward to the late weeks of summer when there is a chance of encountering newly hatched sea turtles scrambling for the waterline. The giant turtles will soon be arriving all along this stretch of protected coastline to deposit their eggs in nests far up from the surf. The nesting area is a twenty mile stretch of beach, and around 150,000 pounds of eggs are laid each year. It’s always a perilous dash for the baby turtles, and nature very often turns against many. In summers past I’ve ‘rescued’ hatchlings found unmoving at the water’s edge, keeping them safe until the turtle specialists picked them up. I am told they hold them for a few weeks until they grow stronger and can be dropped off at a favorable site twenty-five miles offshore. Hard to imagine when holding a turtle hatchling in the palm of your hand that one day it will grow to be the size of an 800 pound boulder.