How many young girls would undress and dive under?
We leave early tomorrow, but ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch and I are still on Cape Cod. Today there was more beach.
Chapin Beach was much, much windier than Corporation Beach, which explained the parasailers. They were almost all out past the sandbars and left the beach itself to us and a few other couples. Sometimes their kites resembled the wings of seabirds, sometimes the bells of jellyfish.
We had brought a beach towel this time, so we spread it out at the foot of a dune topped with tough marram grass and ate the soft-serve ice cream we had bought from Captain Frosty's (to whom I give an extra shout-out not only because their soft-serve is delicious but because their servers and their patrons are the only other people we have met all weekend who bothered to wear masks in proximity to other human beings) and curled up for a while in the sun and the constant wind. The sky was the color of television, tuned to a seagoing channel.
I have no idea how I managed to take an accidental selfie with an old-fashioned digital camera that has no selfie mode. I think I was worried I'd smudged the lens.
Nearing high tide, there was still plenty of shingle between the smooth grey sand and the sea, but my ideal of a beach continues to involve tidepools, so it was with vocal delight that I discovered these barnacles and snails.
Not to mention the Tiffany abstracts of the waves rippling them over.
Rob got the wide shot.
I was showing off a barnacle.
I might feel much less friendly toward barnacles if I owned a boat I had to scrape them off of, but since a boat is not currently in the cards, I find them lovely.
This snail seemed to feel the same way.
The mermaid's tresses looked exactly like their name, but also curiously self-willed, as if swimming against a current.
The road the sun hammers out of the waves.
selidor has since identified yesterday's mysterious jellyfish as a juvenile lion's mane. They were all over Chapin Beach, especially one particular scoop of sand where we wondered if they had been driven by the current. Rob captured one of them in deceptive pancake mode.
At the far end of the beach, we found the tidal inlet of a salt marsh. We will return for the boardwalk.
I have spent years of my life trying to write these combing cloudy greens.
The captain looks windward again.
When we sighted this pair of horseshoe crabs mating, Rob called to them jubilantly, "We wish you a happy copulation! Spawn as many little crabs as you're supposed to! May they rule this beach with equanimity and benevolence!"
Just waves, which I love.
Rob photographed me walking out to them.
A mermaid's purse, treasure as we turned home.
I came home with two jingle shells of different colors, a glossy white clam shell smaller than my pinkie nail, a clear lump of not yet sea-rounded quartz, and an oyster shell mottled purple and white. My hair is still snarled with salt. I have to find some way to live by the sea. It makes me feel like I should be alive.
spatch and I are still on Cape Cod. Today there was more beach.
Chapin Beach was much, much windier than Corporation Beach, which explained the parasailers. They were almost all out past the sandbars and left the beach itself to us and a few other couples. Sometimes their kites resembled the wings of seabirds, sometimes the bells of jellyfish.
We had brought a beach towel this time, so we spread it out at the foot of a dune topped with tough marram grass and ate the soft-serve ice cream we had bought from Captain Frosty's (to whom I give an extra shout-out not only because their soft-serve is delicious but because their servers and their patrons are the only other people we have met all weekend who bothered to wear masks in proximity to other human beings) and curled up for a while in the sun and the constant wind. The sky was the color of television, tuned to a seagoing channel.
I have no idea how I managed to take an accidental selfie with an old-fashioned digital camera that has no selfie mode. I think I was worried I'd smudged the lens.
Nearing high tide, there was still plenty of shingle between the smooth grey sand and the sea, but my ideal of a beach continues to involve tidepools, so it was with vocal delight that I discovered these barnacles and snails.
Not to mention the Tiffany abstracts of the waves rippling them over.
Rob got the wide shot.
I was showing off a barnacle.
I might feel much less friendly toward barnacles if I owned a boat I had to scrape them off of, but since a boat is not currently in the cards, I find them lovely.
This snail seemed to feel the same way.
The mermaid's tresses looked exactly like their name, but also curiously self-willed, as if swimming against a current.
The road the sun hammers out of the waves.
selidor has since identified yesterday's mysterious jellyfish as a juvenile lion's mane. They were all over Chapin Beach, especially one particular scoop of sand where we wondered if they had been driven by the current. Rob captured one of them in deceptive pancake mode.
At the far end of the beach, we found the tidal inlet of a salt marsh. We will return for the boardwalk.
I have spent years of my life trying to write these combing cloudy greens.
The captain looks windward again.
When we sighted this pair of horseshoe crabs mating, Rob called to them jubilantly, "We wish you a happy copulation! Spawn as many little crabs as you're supposed to! May they rule this beach with equanimity and benevolence!"
Just waves, which I love.
Rob photographed me walking out to them.
A mermaid's purse, treasure as we turned home.
I came home with two jingle shells of different colors, a glossy white clam shell smaller than my pinkie nail, a clear lump of not yet sea-rounded quartz, and an oyster shell mottled purple and white. My hair is still snarled with salt. I have to find some way to live by the sea. It makes me feel like I should be alive.
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The accidental selfie is a very happy accident.
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You should work on it! You could ask if Spatch could work remotely from Cape Cod or commute in once or twice a week/month if there's some reason he can't work remotely all the time. You could look into what size of mortgage you might qualify for given income and then see if there's anything around that amount on the market. I did a quick look on some real estate pages and they seem to assume that most people are buying beach front property so they can visit for part of the summer and rent it out the rest of the year, but you could talk to an agent about the sort of places within walking distance from the water that you could live in year round. (My parents' best friends from college have lived on the Cape for as long as I've known them, walking distance from the bay side water, I could ask them for advice if you like.)
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Nine
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My ideal coastline is full of them.
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You're welcome. I hope there is a safe way for you to get sea soon.
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Thank you!
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It's the first name I learned for them! That particular shape is the egg case of a skate.
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It reminded me of Crescent Beach on Cape Elizabeth, one of the beaches of my childhood. Apparently at low tide the sand runs out forever.
The accidental selfie is a very happy accident.
Thank you! I like it.
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You're welcome!
I love Rob's benediction of the amorous horseshoe crabs, I love the barnacles and snails (love them), am so glad to have the name of the jellyfish (loved Rob's pancake photo, which I'd seen earlier),
(The little dab of seafoam butter was just ridiculous.)
love the colors and textures of water, and love the mermaid's purse. So grateful for this visit.
I am very happy to be able to share.
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I appreciate the offer. Right now we do not have the money to contemplate such a move and
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Thank you. I'm glad it helps. I hope you, too, can visit safely soon.
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That quote is gorgeously repurposed/rejigged!
And that picture of you walking into the waves, very much the mermaid returns to her element.
My sister also went to the sea yesterday - driving out to her husband's home town to walk on the headland. I am envious.
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Thank you!
And that picture of you walking into the waves, very much the mermaid returns to her element.
*hugs*
My sister also went to the sea yesterday - driving out to her husband's home town to walk on the headland. I am envious.
I can see why. (I do not disdain sand beaches, but my platonic coastline is rocky.) I don't know what your mobility is currently doing: is ocean accessible to you if you drive out to it with someone?
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Thank you!
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Late is not unwelcome! Thank you.
I live inland, but I love the seashore and hope I can go back sometime soon.
I wish it you. What is the seashore like where you are? I have never been as far north as Alaska.
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Much of it is rocky, wild beaches, like this. Also tidal mudflats and salt marshes, especially along river deltas. We don't really have sand beaches - at least not on the ocean; there are some recreation areas on lakes and rivers that have sand beaches. But our ocean shores are mostly rocks or mud.
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That sounds (and looks) gorgeous. I am extremely fond of salt marshes.
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Understood, and apologies for the insulting question.
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I absolutely didn't find it insulting! Still seems like a reasonable question to ask, the answer's just not quite as simple as things would appear on the surface.
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Okay. Thank you for the reality check. I thought I had over-assumed and I did not want to have.
(Being alive is complicated.)