Deserted

The habit here is bare feet on most days. That means that once in a while there’s a chance of making a wrong step and coming down on a broken shell or something else with sharp edges. Grass around here has on the other hand always been a soft and cushy surface without threat. So I felt safe puttering around barefoot in the grass yesterday and didn’t expect the knife-like stab that surprised me. After I stopped hopping about on one leg howling a bad word or two I tried to find the something that stuck me, but it was either gone or well camouflaged. Well, it left me with a very tender foot and slight limp which has carried into today and required all-day shoes and socks to cushion the sore spot on my foot. In spite of the soreness, sitting around moaning about it didn’t work. A walk on the beach was deemed the best thing for it.

With the coming of May the scene here has gone through another radical shift, and to my eyes a welcome one. For much of the week the beach is deserted, leaving wind and water to erase the marks left by beach parties, the birds to pass their days unmolested, and for a few weeks the natural scene to slip back into what it has always been without human interference. The photos here show a few of the colors along an undisturbed beach.

Here the brown sand contrasts with pale blue sky and silvery water, puffy clouds and flattened beach.

Cloudiness and threat of rain worked interesting changes, altering light and shadow at a moment’s notice.

A second shot from the same stretch of beach seen through a different filter.

Here is a look at a starfish washed up in the surf. It was still alive in this photo but for whatever reasons would not swim out into deeper water. I made an effort to return it to safer water but the surf brought it back two or three times. It made small movements in my hand but was clearly in a weakened conditioned.

Here’s a view from the patio, and apart from ocean and sky a good look at the grass that stabbed my foot unexpectedly yesterday. The palm tree is fresh from a trim with all its fronds standing tall.

Nail Polish for Crabs

Among the tumble of curious bits and pieces, living or otherwise that wash up on Florida’s east coast are many things that are unremarkable common daily sights. Then there are those less common that for a few moments at least make you wonder what it is on the sand at your feet. After a few months of walking the beach each day, all the sights or findings at the waterline fall into categories like rare, limited and common. Today I passed a family fascinated by a seashell they had discovered in the surf—“Wow! Should we keep it?” Anyone living here could instantly suggest a ‘no’ reply to that question, if only because the shell in question is one of ten million, with a prettier one probably a hundred feet further down the beach.

One of the less common remains of sea life on my watch list is the detached back shell of young blue crabs, or at least what I believe to be blue crabs. It’s the distinctive points on either side of the shell that make me think they are blue crabs, even without the ‘blue’ that gives them their name. The blue coloring comes later in their growth. Along Florida’s east coast the blue crab is most numerous among crabs, and is a popular food in both their soft and hardshell state. It isn't often that full grown blue crabs wash up in the surf, but the smaller, immature crabs sometimes do get washed up. Birds are quick to flip the young crabs over and go to work on the soft underside. In the end all that’s left is an empty shell of delicate beauty, many of which get quickly broken because of their delicacy. More than once a handsome shell has crumbled in the grip of even gentle hands. In my regular walks I’ve managed to find or carry home only six of these detached blue crab shells.

Another rare sight is the shell of the spider crab, a less delicate and less beautiful specimen. So far, only one of those has been spotted by these eyes. He’s the dark brown spiny one at the top of the line in the photograph. The photo of the whole crab with claws and legs shows a female blue crab, obvious from the red claw-nail polish.

These days much on the beach is being trampled by the influx of spring break tourists, and it isn’t only fragile shells that suffer. Birds are tormented by children and the beach as well with all the cast off plastic bottles, toys and empty bags of chips. Few of us are fans of dirty beaches but people continue to make them so.

On a lesser note, April 4 marked 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometers) of walking on the beach since beginning on May 1, 2010. Guilty of the sin of pride.

Something in the Air

Can’t describe myself as doing much of anything today, most of it along the lines of what I imagine as the life of Riley. But don’t misunderstand that to mean sleeping until noon and idling away the remaining hours flipping through movie magazines and munching chocolate bonbons. No, after the usual early morning walk on the beach, I passed a couple of hours reading to my golden girls in the retirement home down the street, then came home to laze way the afternoon marveling at the change of season underway here on the watery edge.

The doors and windows are all open here and autumn breezes are blowing through and unclogging these stale rooms. Surprising how insensitive one becomes to a daily electric climate, dulled and accepting of the ‘perfect’ air-conditioned temperature. Though it seems a little early to me (my first autumn in Florida) I am experiencing a change now that involves much more than mere changing temperatures. Something is in the air. A shift is in progress on every front. The color of the ocean has darkened, the light has gradually become more sympathetic, less intimidating. New birds have come from other climates to winter at the seaside. Ocean water is colder, the beard of seaweed tracing the surf line redder now. I doubt there is ever a time in this setting when the air is anything less than fresh, but at this time of year you notice a clear difference in the air, a difference that enlivens the senses.

In the late afternoon I walked down to the water’s edge with the idea of filling my vision with nothing but ocean and sky, wanting to stand with feet in the surf, seeing a hundred and eighty degrees of only those elements, divided by the razor sharp horizon. But in fact, nothing about it surprised me; colder water, deeper blue ocean, and perfect clarity to the horizon three miles out. Walking back up to the beach stairs, I came upon the lady in sand, an image that made me think of Picasso for some reason. The photo of the stairs? Nothing special, except as a look at the climbing sand bolstered by October tides.