To cormorant to samphire to plover
I seem to have been the member of my family to introduce my niece to the Atlantic off Cape Elizabeth where I learned to swim. Since ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch and I had the honor and the fun of driving her back to her father, we took the opportunity to stop off in Kittery for fried summer foods, York Beach for body-slamming waves and salt water taffy and soft-serve, and then Two Lights for climbing all over the ledges she kept making sure were not petrified wood before handing the tall child back at Kettle Cove where she had waded out to gather wet-shining lumps of quartz. I forgot to pack swim trunks and the cuffs of my jeans are full of sand.
I took scattershot photos and mostly not until Two Lights, but I liked this slice of parking lot from York Beach. My niece spent most of her time bodysurfing end-over-end at near high tide. I had not had the Goldenrod's peanut butter salt water taffy in almost thirty years. My grandparents used to keep it in the house, along with caramel bull's-eyes and those red-and-green-foiled strawberry candies.
Except for the thickening crust of barnacles and bladderwrack, I do not think this view has changed meaningfully in my entire lifetime of visiting Two Lights. We got unexpectedly into the state park for free when I said, not untruthfully, that it was one of the places I had grown up.
My niece glimmers in the tidepool, like any sea-thing. She was enchanted most by the green drifts of mermaid's hair.
I love all the torn and scumbled colors of this water. She was curious about the cleaved and folded ledges flaking like petrified bark instead of Devonian silt. I told her as much as I could remember about the Kittery Formation, the sand-and-mud beds of quartzite and phyllite, the veins of white quartz and the dikes of basalt. She expressed surprise that I could climb up any faulted cliff beside her. "Where did you come from?" she cried. "Out of the rock," I said once. She did not approve of that answer.
My niece summits the ledges by sinking sun.
At Kettle Cove, I walked barefoot over the springing beds of knotted wrack and the emery bite of barnacles. I told my niece about the invasive tiny green crabs her father and I used to catch, which even under capitalism it is now ethical to consume. I dislike so very much of the wrench of the world, but I love that my niece has turned out to love the sea.
spatch and I had the honor and the fun of driving her back to her father, we took the opportunity to stop off in Kittery for fried summer foods, York Beach for body-slamming waves and salt water taffy and soft-serve, and then Two Lights for climbing all over the ledges she kept making sure were not petrified wood before handing the tall child back at Kettle Cove where she had waded out to gather wet-shining lumps of quartz. I forgot to pack swim trunks and the cuffs of my jeans are full of sand.
I took scattershot photos and mostly not until Two Lights, but I liked this slice of parking lot from York Beach. My niece spent most of her time bodysurfing end-over-end at near high tide. I had not had the Goldenrod's peanut butter salt water taffy in almost thirty years. My grandparents used to keep it in the house, along with caramel bull's-eyes and those red-and-green-foiled strawberry candies.
Except for the thickening crust of barnacles and bladderwrack, I do not think this view has changed meaningfully in my entire lifetime of visiting Two Lights. We got unexpectedly into the state park for free when I said, not untruthfully, that it was one of the places I had grown up.
My niece glimmers in the tidepool, like any sea-thing. She was enchanted most by the green drifts of mermaid's hair.
I love all the torn and scumbled colors of this water. She was curious about the cleaved and folded ledges flaking like petrified bark instead of Devonian silt. I told her as much as I could remember about the Kittery Formation, the sand-and-mud beds of quartzite and phyllite, the veins of white quartz and the dikes of basalt. She expressed surprise that I could climb up any faulted cliff beside her. "Where did you come from?" she cried. "Out of the rock," I said once. She did not approve of that answer.
My niece summits the ledges by sinking sun.
At Kettle Cove, I walked barefoot over the springing beds of knotted wrack and the emery bite of barnacles. I told my niece about the invasive tiny green crabs her father and I used to catch, which even under capitalism it is now ethical to consume. I dislike so very much of the wrench of the world, but I love that my niece has turned out to love the sea.
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Regret inform would also dive a shipwreck, but I understand the reasoning. There's always Adrienne Rich.
It’s lovely to see your niece picking up generational habits.
It was not guaranteed and it makes me so happy.
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You should trust more when it comes to these kids, zissele. They know what’s good in the world, and they know when they’re so loved it’s ridiculous. (Mine knows he can scam me out of all but a sip of my fancy mocktails.)
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Rcy71DSBus
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Understandably!
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*hugs*
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She's a pleasure to travel with! It made me so happy that she was interested in the geology, too.
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Thank you! It's my favorite, too.
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It is convenient when an invasive species is nice and edible :D
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Thank you!
It is convenient when an invasive species is nice and edible
And tasty, too!
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She expressed surprise that I could climb up any faulted cliff beside her. "Where did you come from?" she cried. --Good for teenagers (? yes? or not yet?) to keep in mind what forty-somethings are capable of ;-)
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I have photographs from almost twenty years ago of those same tidepools. I love them so much.
--Good for teenagers (? yes? or not yet?) to keep in mind what forty-somethings are capable of
I believe she is still technically a tween, but that's how I'm thinking about it!