sovay: (Otachi: Pacific Rim)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2020-06-14 11:39 pm

How many young girls would undress and dive under?

We leave early tomorrow, but [personal profile] 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.



[personal profile] 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.
cmcmck: (Default)

[personal profile] cmcmck 2020-06-15 09:00 am (UTC)(link)
Rockpools! :o)
tree_and_leaf: Watercolour of barn owl perched on post. (Default)

[personal profile] tree_and_leaf 2020-06-15 10:28 am (UTC)(link)
Thank you for sharing these. I really miss the sea right now.
poliphilo: (Default)

[personal profile] poliphilo 2020-06-15 10:39 am (UTC)(link)
What a wonderful beach.

The accidental selfie is a very happy accident.
asakiyume: (birds to watch over you)

[personal profile] asakiyume 2020-06-15 12:02 pm (UTC)(link)
Blissss! Thank you so much! 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), love the colors and textures of water, and love the mermaid's purse. So grateful for this visit.
thisbluespirit: (Default)

[personal profile] thisbluespirit 2020-06-15 01:05 pm (UTC)(link)
Aw, lovely photos and I'm so glad you've been able to get to the sea at last! ♥
desireearmfeldt: (Default)

[personal profile] desireearmfeldt 2020-06-15 01:11 pm (UTC)(link)
I didn't know those things were called mermaid's purses!
weirdquark: Stack of books (Default)

[personal profile] weirdquark 2020-06-15 02:36 pm (UTC)(link)
I have to find some way to live by the sea.

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.)
nineweaving: (Default)

[personal profile] nineweaving 2020-06-15 09:56 pm (UTC)(link)
So beautiful! And so revivifying. I miss the sea.

Nine
davidgillon: A pair of crutches, hanging from coat hooks, reflected in a mirror (Default)

[personal profile] davidgillon 2020-06-16 03:06 am (UTC)(link)
The sky was the color of television, tuned to a seagoing channel.

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.
julian: Picture of the sign for Julian Street. (Default)

[personal profile] julian 2020-06-16 03:23 am (UTC)(link)
Your Tiffany abstract and your mermaid's tresses make me beam. (The rest are pretty evocative, too.)
sholio: sun on winter trees (Default)

[personal profile] sholio 2020-06-16 05:41 am (UTC)(link)
Just coming in a bit late to say that these are lovely pictures. <3 I live inland, but I love the seashore and hope I can go back sometime soon.