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You don't have to fly into the sun
Having somewhat wiped out my reserves with the glories of Corporation Beach, I only made it out to the salt marsh for about an hour between low tide and sunset, which was still great. I saw the copper-glaze glint of fiddler crabs in their burrows in the crenellated banks of mud. I saw the dark-fringed silhouette of an osprey sailing over the green-rusted brushes of cordgrass and salt hay, where they nest with the encouragement of the Callery Darling Conservation Area which includes the wetlands around the Bass Hole Boardwalk. The engine noise floating over from Chapin Beach turned out to belong to a powered paraglider who so annoyed me by effectively buzzing the boardwalk that I let all the other sunset viewers with their phones out enthusiastically take pictures of him. The long-billed, long-legged, unfamiliarly tuxedo-patterned shorebird stalking the deeper edges of a sandbar looks to have been a vagrant black-necked stilt. With the tide so far out, I am afraid there was little chance of another seal.
I had not visited this salt marsh for five and a half years and it was low tide then, too. I still love it.
I saw it for the first time inaccessibly, when these sandbars were an inlet, summer-combed green.
I liked the shadows of the pilings thrown long by autumn and approaching sunset, some looking like ghosts already.
I have no real idea of the identity of the tiny fish that swarmed under the surface of the slowly filling channels. They looked like a squiggle of elvers and were probably Atlantic silversides.
I can never use my favorite color as a challenge question since it is too obviously and publicly green.
I got into the geometries of the boardwalk.
And the evanescence of some of its inhabitants.
As a self-portrait, a total strikeout, raccoon-masked by my own handheld shadow, and I like it because I am having such a good time.
The camera did not comply entirely, but it was the ruffs of red weed around the bases of the pilings with their barnacle-plating above.
The boardwalk used to reach across Clay's Creek, but I am informed that it was never rebuilt after the wear and tear of several storms took the additional span out, partly because it was getting in the way of tern conservation.
The rucks and ripples of the sandbar made the water in the late light look like a mirage.
Ashore, I saw the sunset through a berried juniper screen.
After which I ate dinner, read a little, and passed out for about an hour and a half. Family and friends have been sending me pictures of No Kings, the necessity of which I hate and the turnout of which I cheer. My mother told me about her favorite sign she did not carry: a photograph of the butterfly, the only orange monarch we need. I loved everything about the spare, specific exploration of marginalized languages and historical queerness in Carys Davies' Clear (2024) until the slingshot of the ending as if the author had lost a chapter somewhere over the side in the North Sea. Since the Cape is still autumnal New England, I am drinking mulled cider.
I had not visited this salt marsh for five and a half years and it was low tide then, too. I still love it.
I saw it for the first time inaccessibly, when these sandbars were an inlet, summer-combed green.
I liked the shadows of the pilings thrown long by autumn and approaching sunset, some looking like ghosts already.
I have no real idea of the identity of the tiny fish that swarmed under the surface of the slowly filling channels. They looked like a squiggle of elvers and were probably Atlantic silversides.
I can never use my favorite color as a challenge question since it is too obviously and publicly green.
I got into the geometries of the boardwalk.
And the evanescence of some of its inhabitants.
As a self-portrait, a total strikeout, raccoon-masked by my own handheld shadow, and I like it because I am having such a good time.
The camera did not comply entirely, but it was the ruffs of red weed around the bases of the pilings with their barnacle-plating above.
The boardwalk used to reach across Clay's Creek, but I am informed that it was never rebuilt after the wear and tear of several storms took the additional span out, partly because it was getting in the way of tern conservation.
The rucks and ripples of the sandbar made the water in the late light look like a mirage.
Ashore, I saw the sunset through a berried juniper screen.
After which I ate dinner, read a little, and passed out for about an hour and a half. Family and friends have been sending me pictures of No Kings, the necessity of which I hate and the turnout of which I cheer. My mother told me about her favorite sign she did not carry: a photograph of the butterfly, the only orange monarch we need. I loved everything about the spare, specific exploration of marginalized languages and historical queerness in Carys Davies' Clear (2024) until the slingshot of the ending as if the author had lost a chapter somewhere over the side in the North Sea. Since the Cape is still autumnal New England, I am drinking mulled cider.
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Thank you! The whole thing looked like that, sculptured islands. I love tidal marshes.
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Thank you! It was beautiful there.
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Thank you so much! It always has been.
(I was just re-reading The Garden of Departed Cats, where the colour of the sea is described as "the deep tadpole green, the peacock-plume green, the translucent jellyfish green, the fresh-plum green"... I think you'll approve!)
I approve deeply. I will check the book out!
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Aw! Thank you. Less fascism, more milkweed.
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Well, sold, obviously.
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Thank you for saying so! I am stuck with exceedingly variable stamina for the foreseeable, keep forgetting because when it's topped up it is not impossible for me to climb up and down a breakwater and walk four or five miles like usual, and made sure to do very little beyond the salt marsh yesterday.
*hugs*
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(“A Studebaker.”)
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Not doing things in that scenario is so often the hardest thing! *hugs* Good luck with all of the tiresomeness of that and pacing yourself etc etc, (although I hope your stamina builds up nicely as you go & you can walk the five mile walk again sooner rather than later). <3
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Thank you so much!
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Very popular choice!
*hugs*
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Thank you so much! I like your salt marsh kaiju hypothesis.
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Corporation Beach ... Callery Darling Conservation Area ... Bass Hole Boardwalk
I am enjoying these place names.
The long-billed, long-legged, unfamiliarly tuxedo-patterned shorebird stalking the deeper edges of a sandbar looks to have been a vagrant black-necked stilt.
:O Lucky! I have never seen a stilt.
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Thank you! All I had to do was pick them up.
I am enjoying these place names.
"Callery Darling" is my current favorite. It belongs on some kind of turn-of-the-century character.
:O Lucky! I have never seen a stilt.
I had never seen one before! Assuming I identified it correctly, it's considerably out of its range this far north. Since I am not any kind of organized birder, I appreciate that a non-garbage search engine could accommodate queries about as coherent as "salt marsh" "black back" "legs???" It was like somebody stuck a curlew on top of a flamingo.
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Background OC for my next Forster fic, clearly.
It is the time of year for odd vagrants! And I don't think there's any other wader quite so much 'legs???' as a stilt—they're well named. :D
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Do it do it do it!
It is the time of year for odd vagrants! And I don't think there's any other wader quite so much 'legs???' as a stilt—they're well named.
I am exaggerating only slightly if I say that I thought the water was shallower until it moved.
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Green is my favorite color, too.
This was a wonderful post for me, since I've seen a salt marsh exactly once. I am glad you got to go.
P.
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Thank you so much! It smelled beautifully of salt and everything living and dying and growing in the marsh.
(Iceland last year sounds pretty sweet to me.)
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I was not familiar with them at all! I understood the name instantly!
Green is my favorite color, too.
I do not know if I had known that. Yay.
This was a wonderful post for me, since I've seen a salt marsh exactly once. I am glad you got to go.
Thank you! I am glad you have been to a salt marsh.
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Thank you!
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Here is the last picture I took in Iceland, on my birthday, in Njarðvík.
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That's lovely.
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https://64.media.tumblr.com/5d0575f13131a1fde03dcee7570ffb4b/bd58913e630a8417-9e/s1280x1920/e46b6da1434614215c8fa1b24b60d6950f6a24d1.jpg
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Yay!
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Berried juniper screen --love that.
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I love your microfiction! Now I want to visit a cranberry bog.
--love that.
Thank you!
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I love the idea of dreaming in maple leaves.