Hurrah for the Black Ball Line
Finally, at the end of the day, we made it to a beach. I say finally because the first two times we tried, the beaches were inaccessibly crowded with people who were not six feet apart and definitely not wearing masks—standing in the parking lot of Corporation Beach to survey our chances in the mid-afternoon, I was in fact the only person in sight with a mask on and nobody was giving me space because of it, either. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch received some strongly worded text messages in all caps. We tried again toward evening, struck out a second time with Corporation Beach, couldn't even get into the parking lot at Mayflower Beach, and then Chapin Beach came to our rescue with its long, shining strand of silt and channels and barnacle-sharp cobbles at low tide. My mother set up her folding chair in the lee of a sand dune and my father and I went walking.
There was open water if I followed the tide out far enough.
The sand was full of stranded moon jellies. No lions' manes this time that I could see.
I do not ever tire of walking these roads.
Dead man's fingers on iron clay.
Illuminated like alabaster, a tiny clamshell opened by a fragment of a larger.
I have never known what these ridges left by the action of the tides are formally called. My father and I started calling them Schiaparelli's canals.
I loved the light and the water running over them.
I met a hermit crab.
My father turned back to spend time with my mother and the lengthening sunset and I spent what I was told afterward was nearly an hour wandering the tide flats by myself. I met some herring gulls, some laughing gulls, and the tracks of many sandpipers. I didn't take their calls personally and they didn't seem to mind my singing.
(An incomplete list of songs to which the seagulls of Chapin Beach do not object: the Bills' "Bamfield's John Vanden," Gordon Bok's "Clear Away in the Morning," "Bay of Fundy," and the refrain of "Peter Kagan and the Wind," Clannad's peculiarly jaunty version of "Two Sisters," the chantey I learned from Louisa Killen as "Hilo Johnny Brown," and the Yiddish folksongs "S'iz der step" and "Makhetonim geyen," for which I cannot source the right versions on the internet.)
I tried to take a selfie with a camera that doesn't have a selfie mode. I think my aspect ratio went a bit weird, but so few pictures show the actual color of my eyes.
Standing where the land finally ran out. You can just see the break of a sandbar. Or the whaleback of rocks. I didn't swim out to find out which. I did stand for some time with the waves around my knees.
The sand was dotted with these little holdfast clusters, rolling with their stones.
The water winds back to the sea.
I was so intrigued by the white object jutting from the sun-tipped shallows, but I couldn't photograph from the right angle at a distance: I thought it must be bones. It was a mostly stripped fish head.
I accidentally and blurrily photographed my own hair when it blew in front of the camera, but it looked so much like kelp, I'm keeping it.
Portrait of the artist as a barnacled shadow.
A concatenation of slipper shells.
I had hoped to walk as far west as the salt marshes, but I saw my parents gesturing for me to come in: the bugs were coming out in force at the end of the day. My father nonetheless called his shot of the scene "Endless Summer."
By the time I got back, the sunset had decided to go for the drama.
My mother took this picture of me, enjoying the drama.
I got a clearer shot of the horizon as we were driving away, but I liked the silhouettes. The sky behind them was volcanic.
And then we got home and I fell immediately upon a plate of fried clams, chased by soft-serve ice cream, chased by mermaid latte and collapsing on a couch. Tomorrow we return to Boston. There will not be such ready sea, but there will be cats. I dream of the two together.
spatch received some strongly worded text messages in all caps. We tried again toward evening, struck out a second time with Corporation Beach, couldn't even get into the parking lot at Mayflower Beach, and then Chapin Beach came to our rescue with its long, shining strand of silt and channels and barnacle-sharp cobbles at low tide. My mother set up her folding chair in the lee of a sand dune and my father and I went walking.
There was open water if I followed the tide out far enough.
The sand was full of stranded moon jellies. No lions' manes this time that I could see.
I do not ever tire of walking these roads.
Dead man's fingers on iron clay.
Illuminated like alabaster, a tiny clamshell opened by a fragment of a larger.
I have never known what these ridges left by the action of the tides are formally called. My father and I started calling them Schiaparelli's canals.
I loved the light and the water running over them.
I met a hermit crab.
My father turned back to spend time with my mother and the lengthening sunset and I spent what I was told afterward was nearly an hour wandering the tide flats by myself. I met some herring gulls, some laughing gulls, and the tracks of many sandpipers. I didn't take their calls personally and they didn't seem to mind my singing.
(An incomplete list of songs to which the seagulls of Chapin Beach do not object: the Bills' "Bamfield's John Vanden," Gordon Bok's "Clear Away in the Morning," "Bay of Fundy," and the refrain of "Peter Kagan and the Wind," Clannad's peculiarly jaunty version of "Two Sisters," the chantey I learned from Louisa Killen as "Hilo Johnny Brown," and the Yiddish folksongs "S'iz der step" and "Makhetonim geyen," for which I cannot source the right versions on the internet.)
I tried to take a selfie with a camera that doesn't have a selfie mode. I think my aspect ratio went a bit weird, but so few pictures show the actual color of my eyes.
Standing where the land finally ran out. You can just see the break of a sandbar. Or the whaleback of rocks. I didn't swim out to find out which. I did stand for some time with the waves around my knees.
The sand was dotted with these little holdfast clusters, rolling with their stones.
The water winds back to the sea.
I was so intrigued by the white object jutting from the sun-tipped shallows, but I couldn't photograph from the right angle at a distance: I thought it must be bones. It was a mostly stripped fish head.
I accidentally and blurrily photographed my own hair when it blew in front of the camera, but it looked so much like kelp, I'm keeping it.
Portrait of the artist as a barnacled shadow.
A concatenation of slipper shells.
I had hoped to walk as far west as the salt marshes, but I saw my parents gesturing for me to come in: the bugs were coming out in force at the end of the day. My father nonetheless called his shot of the scene "Endless Summer."
By the time I got back, the sunset had decided to go for the drama.
My mother took this picture of me, enjoying the drama.
I got a clearer shot of the horizon as we were driving away, but I liked the silhouettes. The sky behind them was volcanic.
And then we got home and I fell immediately upon a plate of fried clams, chased by soft-serve ice cream, chased by mermaid latte and collapsing on a couch. Tomorrow we return to Boston. There will not be such ready sea, but there will be cats. I dream of the two together.
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Thank you!
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Thanks for sharing!
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Thank you for being here to share with!
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Thank you! I felt like an Andy Goldsworthy installation.
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Thank you! I am glad that how I feel about the sea comes through the photos. I also love the one my mother took, actually.
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What was up with the all-caps text messages?
p s You have a nice healthy head of kelp. Seriously, that’s a good “art” shot.
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You're welcome! I'm glad that's possible.
What was up with the all-caps text messages?
Just fuming to
p s You have a nice healthy head of kelp. Seriously, that’s a good “art” shot.
Thank you.
Prosaic
Sorry.
http://www.coastalwiki.org/wiki/Sand_ridges_in_shelf_seas
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10652-018-9630-8
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Where?
Re: Prosaic
Small Point's got a tide river (officially, the Sprague River) and then the tidal flat. There's also a cliff walk, which is, in and of itself, worth walking, especially at high tide, but it's somewhat hard to find if you're not aware of it, and it doesn't seem to be on the official maps.
The Small Point Club itself is private and owns some of the access to the beach, but since there's various points of public access, no one cares who's on the actual beach.
There's public access on Gun Club Road, though the signage is somewhat vague. Also you can get there via the road up and over Bates-Morse Mountain Conservation Area; that's a bit of a hike, but it's worth it for many aspects.
If you go in via the conservation area, there's a long sandy beach walk, and you have to cross the Sprague River at some point (if you do it when the tide's going out, it's wonderfully warm), and then eventually you get to a long swatch of rocks that are fan-freakin'-tastic to explore. The actual Small Point point of land has an ex-military base on it, that one can wander around in. We (my biological family and I) have not infrequently gone from the Club Beach, past Isiah Head, down to the actual Small Point as a reasonably far walk.
Small Point point of land, specifically: https://goo.gl/maps/wnfQfUKg3UEthnb7A
Sprague River/Club Beach: https://goo.gl/maps/uNtyAKcLxC9YMeHr7
Re: Prosaic
I appreciate you making me aware of it, then, because I love the cliff walk in Newport. I will make an effort for Small Point.
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The web tells me there are better signed cliff walks in both York and Scarborough/Prout's Neck. (Also one near Portland Head Light.)
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I keep forgetting that exists because I partly grew up at it. (I partly grew up more at Two Lights, though, which does not to my knowledge have a cliff walk, but with those ledges you don't need one.)
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Well, it's uncomplicated.
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i e Too long to post here, but written with you in mind.
Re: Canali
In 1951, Arthur C Clarke's The Exploration of Space described what we then knew about Mars. He worked on the development of radar during the War; hard science was his forté. As Yul Brynner said, “What was so was so; what was not was not”…
But then, that all changed.
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What a lovely visit. Thank you so much.
Gas Giant
> the atmosphere of Jupiter
Yes, I saw that too!
Re: Gas Giant
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Thank you for coming with!
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I can't help thinking about the description of the Ancient Mariner as...
..."long and lank and brown
As is the ribbed sea sand."
A simile that, I believe, was supplied to Coleridge by Wordsworth- back in the days when they were still functioning as the Lennon and Mccartney of Romantic poetry.
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Thank you.
A simile that, I believe, was supplied to Coleridge by Wordsworth- back in the days when they were still functioning as the Lennon and Mccartney of Romantic poetry.
Hah! I did not know that.
I suspect a little of Kingsley's "Three Fishers"—which I learned via Stan Rogers—got into my thinking, too.
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Thank you. They do look like they go together.
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I do not think luau-print board shorts an author photo make, alas, but it is a pretty perfect photo.
So glad you had all that salt water.
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You got Rose right. I trust you.
I do not think luau-print board shorts an author photo make, alas, but it is a pretty perfect photo.
It's a photograph of me just looking happy. I've told my mother how much I like it. There must be some writing context for which it's appropriate. (I hope I don't have to learn to surf first.)
So glad you had all that salt water.
*hugs*
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I think of those tide-pleated beaches as Fortuny flats.
Nine
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Thank you!
I think of those tide-pleated beaches as Fortuny flats.
I like that.
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Thank you! None of the pictures I tried to take of them under the water came out, but there were so many hermit crabs.
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Thank you.
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I'm so glad.
Did you make it to the sea in Maine?
When scrolling through the images, and I got to the picture of your hair, I at first thought it was of the sky at sunset.
That's a wonderful compliment.
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That's still really cool.
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I'm so glad!
Might need to put some salt in a cup of water to hold under my nose. My favorites are your wind-kelp hair and the moon jellies.
Thank you.
I'm also vicariously enjoying the fried clams.
Can you enjoy fried clams on your own time as well?
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Theoretically? But I mostly eat meals at home and don't tend to think the bother of frying things in a kitchen that isn't specialized for it is worth the cleanup. I've been having steamed clams in, for instance, paella. I can't complain about the quality of my food, but also couldn't possibly eat all the meals I want to eat in a day and LIVE.
(I'm not even sure I could manage to eat the number of meals I would like to eat as a factor of how quickly I can chew and swallow, even allowing for my own demise at the end.)
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No, fair. I just didn't know if you were, say, allergic.
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As far as I know, my only food allergy is maybe blackberries and then only if I eat four pounds of blackberries every day for several days (which I did sometimes as a kid who lived near blackberry bushes. It's probably not a real food allergy, in the same way that drowning is not a water allergy. If I eat a normal amount of blackberries, I'm fine.)
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I do wish you that! I just didn't want it to kill you.
It's probably not a real food allergy, in the same way that drowning is not a water allergy.
(a) That's beautifully said.
(b) I am fairly confident that I personally could not digest four pounds of blackberries, so, yeah.