Celebration! Crab feast! Balloons!

There’s a reason I haven’t posted a blog for what seems like several millennium. Last June my foot innocently started to hurt. Hurt to walk, visit to doc; to make a long story short, after a few weeks I was diagnosed with a “stress fracture in the 2nd metatarsal of my left foot”. In other words foot was broke. I wish I could say that I broke it doing something heroic or at least daring but the truth is that I don’t know how it broke though I have a couple of theories.

So I was in a boot I couldn’t walk in and was forbidden from as much as stepping onto the beach for the whole summer. I was good; I only went once. Got some strange looks walking along the surf in my boot but I’m used to strange looks so no big deal.

So finally, finally, boot out, beach in. Celebration. Back to beachcombing for trash, in time for winter storms and birds. I so missed it! I really am a beachcomber at heart. When I was a kid and we vacationed on the beach I spent all my time looking for shells. Now it’s trash but beach trash can be cool. I mean, not the fact that we’re so polluting the planet that even the vast ocean isn’t spared, or the fact that sea turtles, marine mammals, birds and other creatures are suffering because we’re too lazy to take a bag to the store to buy things we often don’t need to begin with. But the possibilities. I admit that I much prefer picking up the trash mixed in with seaweed or that was otherwise obviously washed up. Candy wrappers with Asian writing. Local or from across the sea? Bright yellow bits of fishing line . Occasional sea glass. Unidentified objects.

Then there’s nature watching. Bull kelp, sea palm, shells, jellyfish, birds. The sanderlings are back and this year I’m very cautious about not disturbing them. And, extra extra read all about it, I saw my first snowy plover! In the very early morning just after the sun came up.

And then there’s the crabs. Two live ones, I think Dungeness. Right before that, for about two weeks or so, for some reason the beach was littered with dead crabs. The birds had a great time gourmeting on them. The beach was one big crab feast. So while I felt a little sad for the crabs in a way I didn’t. The crabs lived, enjoyed, and died and the birds were nourished and life, in the macro sense, goes on. Made me think a lot about life cycles, death and food/vegetarianism . Factory farming is destructive no matter which way you look at it but venison? Local venison or soy from who knows where? I think mostly vegetarianism is a great overall choice if for no other reason that where there’s animal agriculture there’s suppression of top predators. And there are other good reasons. But sometimes it’s not so clear-cut. The problem is, most of what we eat (wear, travel, fill-in-the-blank) is not sustainable simply because too many of us are doing it.

Balloons! A lot of what I’ve been picking up is remains of balloons, often with ribbons attached. One group was obviously from the same party. Two in one bunch of seaweed, another later on, then another. Etc. People release balloons to the sky, but the balloons don't dissolve into thin air. They fall back to earth, to the ocean. Wild animals eat them, by mistake or by filter feeding. The most ironic thing I saw on the beach was a dead Earth balloon. I pick them up and think, this one is unnecessary. Balloons are happy, but so are flowers music laughing playing.

So much more that I want to say but one thing that’s not limited is the number of blogs I can write. I’m back and not going away anytime soon (as far as I know). So enjoy the nice day and the Giant’s victory and the fact that we are alive and have the ability to reflect on our actions.

Till we meet again…