Walking the BEach #13 (Mar 07)

 Well, it’s Saturday and we can only go a short ways downstream because several people and dogs are working around the fancy pier. We can’t go upstream along the beach, either, because the high tide is right against the riverbank rocks, unless you want to clamber across them. They pose a potential hazard because stability isn’t guaranteed. If they’re ok one day and a storm comes through, the waves can shift them and cause instabilities.

I’ve begun carrying a walky talky partly because my wife can call, if something comes up at home, but also in case I encounter a problem, my own or someone else’s. A cell phone might be better, but we’ve only one of those and should have a second, if it is used during these walks. So today it’s the radio, the camera, the binoculars and a tape measure just to take a short walk!

Izzy and I do cover enough of the beach to reach the first jetty because I did bring a tape measure. The concrete blocks measure 2 feet x 2 feet x 6 feet, close to what I measured yesterday, but still no reason to call them one-ton or one cubic yard blocks.

The riverbank for this property is high, but sloped more than others and covered with kudzu, that infamous vine that grows very fast. Right now it’s dormant and leafless, leaving a mat of gray vines like a solid mass of spaghetti plastered onto the bank. A few other properties have some of it hanging over, but vines closer to the beach have been carried away by water action and sloughing riverbank.

While kudzu grows fast and can smother vegetation, it is easily contained and pieces washed away in storms do not seem to take root elsewhere. Not everything succumbs to it, either. It will grow up to the base of pine trees, but not climb up the bark. Some of us encourage it, along with anything that will root in soil on our riverbank, for erosion control. The broad leaves that are present during hurricane season, and tangled vines, do help slow soil loss, but are not effective against even a small amount of wave action. The riverbank with the greatest kudzu coverage has the widest beach and little water has reached the bank base for more than a year, so far.

No oyster boats are out today, but a small boat stacked high with black crab pots travels across the bay in preparation for a forthcoming season. The pots are square cages of light gage wire coated with black vinyl. They can be stacked six feet high and out over the edge (gunwales) of the boat, so from a distance a boat load looks like a black cube traveling across the water; very distinctive.

Izzy and I head up our access road. The weather is cool, but we both are pretty warm by the time we get back; that kind of weather. Also, we appreciate the pleasantness even more because the bitting bugs have not yet appeared, but we know they are coming.

The tent caterpillars are more evident today than last Saturday. Their tents have grown from pingpong ball to softball size and larger. I must check trees around our house for them because they can appear anywhere without warning.

The summer wheat is starting to look unkempt as it gains altitude.

One dogwood tree has blossoms that have just started opening. The new green appearing on most trees is developing different shades and tints of the color. An exception is the maple tree that is producing small clusters of young, rusty-red wing-shaped seeds instead of any leaves to get the jump on any competition. The seeds will begin showering down within a month.

The most interesting tree-development is an unknown species that is producing a seed-related cluster on the tip of every twig making multiple tassels of two or three inch length in a tanish-green color. These trees look like they’ve been draped with dreadlocks.

Despite the recent dusting of pollen on just one day along the river, the few pines along this route are still developing the new pine cone clusters that will soon dump great amounts of pollen. So some other major source of pollen has been at work.

As we start up the road some loud engine noises are apparent from the highway area. We never see anything even when we reach the main road, but the sound is pretty continuous. It sounds like dirt bikes are being raced around behind homes across the two-lane highway. When we get home I notice the sound carries all the way to the beach, standing out from the other background sound always present from aircraft, boats, waves, and ground-based vehicles, including lawnmowers, garden tractors, road graders, and construction equipment. Chainsaws and whole-house generators are also around. So, when a rare heavy fog or snowfall block all this sound, it’s really noticeable and you realize how much activity we have around us even though we are miles from any towns. —-

Walking the Beach #12 (Mar 07)

 A much nicer day, though still a high tide. It’s clear, the river water is bright with sparkles and a comfortable breeze. Only six oyster boats today, but two tugs (one in front and one in back) are moving a large gray ship downstream. It has a radome on one end and several very large radio antenna amidships, so it could be military or research. There’s an Army transportation base on the river upstream and it might be from there. The ghost or reserve fleet is not scheduled to remove any more ships for awhile making it an unlikely source. As it moves downriver a small helicopter hovers nearby, perhaps a news chopper. I take several photos with the binocular camera and they come out with limited haze, but not great.

Four contrails are visible in the clear sky. That’s average. Later there are six. One has red coloring on the nose end, so it must be a commercial airliner. At the end of our walk a Sikorsky helicopter comes over the bank and crosses the river a mile away.

When we start our a blue heron flys up from some nearby spot on the beach upstream and heads downstream. They are common and there’s one or two somewhere along the way when our walk included an upstream portion of the river. It may be a seasonal thing.

We still have to clamber over the jettys and this time I use a small dog leash I carry to mark off dimensions of a concrete block. It is 68 inches long, 23 thick and 22 high. That makes for 20 cubic feet and at 150 lbs a cubic foot of concrete, a weight of 3000 lbs. So it’s not a cubic yard and it’s not a one-ton block. Dunno, but it’s pretty hefty, yet still gets moved around by the water when conditions are right.

Only three pull ups today.

A small chunk about the size of a match box of concreted (cementitious) fossil shell mix catches my eye because of some clear material mixed in with it. This is the third time I’ve found this clear material. It looks like mineral crystal. One piece another time had a geometric shape and the third was a thin slab about a quarter inch thick and six inches on the side. All of it looks like it comes from the same source. I’ll add this one to the others at home.

The blue heron landed in the water at the shoreline near the fancy pier and allows several photos to be taken, including one in flight on the way back upstream when we get too close.

We get past the halfway obstacle this time. Less wind must be a factor today, but it’s still a close call for getting feet wet.  Right in this area we find a nice matching pair of chesapecten jeffersonius fossil scallop shells.  They are stuck in place, filled with and partly covered with the cement-type stuff making it all weigh about five pounds, but certainly more durable than clean half shells.

The halfway obstacle is at the biggest promontory and two turkey vultures are circling overhead. A house sits on this point of land and they appear to be interested in that area. I get a good shot of one with the binocular camera and am concerned he may be too close for the lens, but it turns out ok, though still not great quality: not the greatest camera. A couple kingfishers buzz us and I get one coming directly overhead which also turns out with the same, but lesser quality. The regular camera just doesn’t have the design that allow quick viewing and shooting, especially with bright lighting.

Past this obstacle we have to climb over several piles of tangled tree trunks, driftwood, and big chunks of fossilized coral, and the cemented seashells. We are right up against the bank in places and have to keep in mind that chunks of the bank can come loose at any time, the reason we stay as far away as possible, when we can. We also have to start watching for snakes when climbing over stuff. As the weather warms they will be out and a driftwood pile looks like a good place for a reptile to roost.

It’s in this area we see some deer tracks in the sand. They are a regular feature on the upstream route at one location. These are where the bank is pretty high, but a deer could still find a spot to get up, if the need arose.

Also in this area there’s another float washed up. This one is half red and half orange with a number, 159, carved into it. A letter would precede the number, but a chunk of the Styrofoam is broken off where it would be. Nearby is also an interesting feather that may be from a brown hawk. It’s a foot long, in perfect shape and has eight alternating banks of brown and light tan along the length. Izzy is most interested in sniffing it, but doesn’t want to chew on it like the usual stick. We also find a ball that may be a tennis ball with the fuzz worn off for him to chase a few times on the way back before he loses interest.

This was definitely a better day. —-

Walking the Beach #11 (Mar 07)

Spring has turned chilly today with a high in the 50’s, plus it’s cloudy, breezy and tide is almost a the high mark. The tree branch used for pull ups is over the water making it difficult to do the exercise without stepping in the water.

Izzy and I can’t get past the worst beach obstacle half way down and only make half our usual distance. We do a short side trip on a neighborhood road when we get back.

No oyster boats today, either, or birds of note. The tide forces us to climb over jettys we normally can skirt. There are six large jettys on as many properties and each starts at the river bank with large concrete blocks stacked two deep. The blocks are a common size and are described in the construction trade as either a cubic yard or one ton block, I forget which. They are rectangular, about five feet long, two feet high and 18 inches thick with grooves on the bottom and one end, and a ridge on the top and other end. The top ridge has a gap of some eight inches where a lifting loop of half-inch rebar is embedded.

Sand piles up on the upstream side of each jetty. Several blocks have shifted, either because sand washed out underneath, or just pushed over by the water. We have to jump from the top of one jetty that’s about three feet above the downriver sand level, then climb back on the return trip. Only two jettys are entirely concrete blocks. The others are finished up with rocks and scrap concrete on the river end.

Many places along the riverbank are damp from water leaching out through the soil. In addition, two streams flow over the top and reach the river. Three smaller streams appear but disappear into the sand as they cross the beach. Some wet spots leak enough water to form icicles in the winter. Most are ten or fifteen feet from the top of the bank. One is at the base, almost forty feet down, and is just a trickle that reaches out a couple feet. It never changes despite long dry periods or very rainy times. In other places such wet spots have responded to heavy rains by washing out large piece of the riverbank near homes.

The river water is always murky. At the best of times you can see about a foot deep. Notes from Capt John Smith of Jamestown fame some 400 years ago say fish could be seen thirty feet deep in his time. The clarity has changed mostly from farm field runoff. —-

Walking the Beach #10 (Mar 07)

It’s almost a perfect day for walking,, cool with a slight breeze, although Izzy starts lobbying to return home before we are halfway to the turnaround point.

A few last words about piers, or the one fancy and other low damaged one. The high fancy has a red navigation light on the edge of the roof at the end that is always off during our walks. It’s something to monitor and see if it’s turned on at night during the summer when boats are out, like on the Fourth of July. One of the two boat lifts for this pier has a roof. The second lift was just built and may acquire a roof later. Lastly, this pier has a railing on both sides of the walkway and all around each landing, while the low damaged pier has none. The low pier is also lacking a boat lift, but has no need, being low to the water already.

Several oyster boats are again loosely clustered in a row a half mile out. This morning there are two, a small gap, then one, a gap and two, a gap, and the last two which are next to the skeletal base of an old screw piling lighthouse. The wood lighthouse is long gone, now. It was no longer needed and demolished some twenty years ago. The metal-framed base is a square with a leg at each corner and braced with another leg at a diagonal into the water. The bottoms of these legs have a screw tip used to embed the ends into the river bottom before the tops are welded in place. The base sits in shallow water averaging about five feet deep for about a quarter mile out before the water deepens. Where the lighthouse stood is a sort of submerged island and called a shoal.

All these distances I’ve been quoting caused me to pull out a navigation chart to double check them and find I’ve been overestimating. It is only four miles across the river here, instead of six, and ten miles instead of fifteen to the James River Bridge downstream, so the field of view is only fifty square miles instead of the hundred or so I noted on another day. Also it looks like our walk covers almost a mile each way according to this chart; pretty good for a little dog and old guy.

Pollen season has begun. It has dusted a yellow coat on the water along the shore.

Only a lone eagle can be seen perched in a tree and he flaps off as we approach. Several kingfishers fly by. They are regulars to we see from day to day, but always from a distance. They are careful to keep their distance and fly off with a characteristic chatter when we get close. I want a good photo or two, but so far have not been able to sneak up on them.

Very few aircraft have been airborne the last week. A couple commercial passenger liners fly by in the distance today as we walk. I don’t hear them but do hear what sounds like a large engine idling; big, like a railroad engine, and then realize it’s the oyster boats. Their engines run continuously and the breeze is such that it carries the sound ashore.

The trees along the shore are showing a lot of spring green. Our last date for frost is Apr 15. Many fruit trees have produced blossoms and if we do have a freeze there will be less fruit to pick this year.

On our return lap I remember the three-way driftwood tree knot and find it still perched on the fallen tree beside an interesting fish bone left on another day and bring them both back. The bone is an odd shape with one projection looking like a small section of an old-fashioned folding fan. Attached to the body is a pointed piece about three inches long with a few sawtooth-looking projections toward the tip along one side. If you watch The Simpsons, it looks like Mr Burn’s nose! I think it’s from a catfish. I must try not to accumulate too many of these things or our place will look like a museum.

Manage four old-guy pull ups both ways this time. Must be the nicer weather. —–

Walking the Beach #9 (Mar 07)

 It’s very warm this morning and hazy out over the water. The tide’s about midway and no wave action, so pretty quiet. Only a slight breeze is blowing, probably the reason for the absence of waves.

The fancy pier and low one that’s missing most of its planks both extend out about 210 feet. The fancy one uses pilings spaced about ten feet apart. The other uses the same size pilings but spaced closer, about eight feet. Older pilings can be square, but nowadays they are round; probably cheaper to produce.

These piers often have an expanded area at the end. Both of these have a t-shaped end, the T being about twenty or thirty feet long.

It’s rare to see a storage shed on a pier. The shed on the fancy pier looks to be 5×10 feet square, seven feet high, and made with treated lumber.

The birds are quiet this morning and only a few are flying about. But the oyster boats are still busy and far out in the water.

A large container ship is moving upstream on the other side of the oyster boats. The main navigation channel is at least four miles towards the other side of the river, maybe five. While the river runs fairly straight to the James River Bridge, downstream, the channel goes through a sharp bend just before the bridge; don’t know why, but ships appear to disappear as they reach the bridge and turn so you only see them endwise.

My binoculars contain a digital camera that lets you copy what’s seen.  It has about an 8X magnification and is pretty nifty.  It’s certainly better than the camera at letting you find what you want to shoot.  However, the haze is intensified in any photos making many unacceptable.  Certainly the haze today makes photographing the container ship an futile exercise.

I found an unusual weathered tree knot washed up on the beach.  It’s a joined set of three knots, two large and one small, with the larger two forming a V and the third leg pointing off at a right angle. I left it on a fallen tree on the way down, but forgot to pick it up on the way back.  It’ll be there tomorrow.

Periodically I find some object left hanging or perched in an easily seen location.  It’s like the lost license plate or hubcap you see placed on a fence post along a roadway. The beach stuff shows someone has passed by like the signs a tracker sees.  Each is in an out-of-place item in an out-of-place location: a halter top hooked on the branch of a fallen tree above the high water mark, or attractive shell perched atop an outcropping where it is unlikely to have appeared naturally.

The beach provides a clean slate after each high tide so human and animal movement is more easily studied.  One set of animal tracks were in dry sand and looked a little like bird prints, but a continuous narrow groove ran between them from start to end, over one hundred feet.  A possum might have made them, but it’s a mystery for now.

Izzy started panting part way down the first leg and was pretty tuckered by the time we finished.  Oddly, though, he didn’t get in the river water or and avoided getting his feet wet in a small stream we ford that flows down the beach at one place. —–

Walking the Beach#8 (Mar 07)

We’ve the beach to ourselves today, Izzy and I. It’s Monday. The tide is midway and it’s cool again. We had lots of wind blowing towards the riverbank last night and it washed sand away. A shelf or ridge of sand usually runs along the beach and it’s more pronounced. The sand level below the ridge is a foot lower, now, and our path is littered with many more lumps and clumps of hardpan or caliche and clay. The water lapping at the shoreline is surprisingly noisy compared with low-low tide.

The fancy pier now has a boat suspended in one of the boat lifts. Also I see there is actually another landing , so add one to the number noted in that other entry; hard to keep up with such fancy construction.

Close to the halfway turnaround point a couple eagle take off from a downed tree lying on the sand. That’s unusual. They circle around up into a nearby, upright tree and one has a wing with a missing feather, one of the large ones in the center of the wing. Then a third one shows up and circles over the tree. At first I think it’s a vulture like the other day, if it was an actual vulture, because the two eagles launch themselves and the circling one starts harassing one of them. It looks like this might be two males fighting over a female, but then a fourth one shows up and harasses, too. Now it looks like a territory dispute. They wheel about one another and move off over the trees out of sight.

The floats tied to oyster bed markers are not visible, now, so they do disappear at higher water levels. Five oyster boats are at work a mile out. They always cluster together and this batch looks like it’s in a line covering, oh, a hundred yards. Sometimes only a single boat can be seen, and sometimes a couple groups are visible. When close to shore you can hear the engines running constantly. They start early and it can wake you up in the morning. A couple of their marker floats, one painted orange, the other lime, are washed ashore. I pick them up and leave them by the fancy pier, an offering to the pier gods.

The interesting find is a piece of driftwood. Tree knots, or the part of the limb where it joins a tree, are the last part of some woods to wear away as they wash about. The result can be interesting. This one looks either like a Star Trek phaser or ocarina but slightly smaller. You’d think all the sand washing away would reveal a few more interesting things. Curious how at low-low tide the removed sand isn’t visible, and how I don’t see things on the tidal flats on their way in, like old bottles, pieces of driftwood or the Bic lighter I mentioned in an earlier report. —-

Walking the Beach #7 (Mar 07)

It’s Sunday and I see people walking with their dogs before we cross the lawn towards the river. Izzy’s low to the ground and doesn’t see, but smells the dogs. His hackles rise up and he starts snorting and growling so I head him the opposite way up our 0.7 mile access road for today’s walk. Izzy is small, a Boston bull terrier and chihuahua mix, but hard to control, so avoiding groups of dogs and people is less stressful for everyone. I know the road length is 0.7 mile because there’s a state sign where the it connects to the surfaced road.

 

So our beach for today is a gravel road. The view is more restricted compared with looking across the James River for six miles and downstream at least fifteen giving one a field of view close to 100 square miles. That’s probably a hundred times more than this path has.

We seem to have more birds in the woods and brush alongside the road than on the beach judging from all the singing. Part of this is celebration of a very nice, bright spring day I’m sure. It’s more sheltered here, too, and less wind than on the beach.

Four cultivated fields of about four acres each, two on each side of the roadway, line it and this year each is planted with winter wheat. Today it shows an inch or two of growth giving the fields the look of a new fresh green lawn.

A few tent caterpillar webs are already visible even though little greenery is apparent as food. This time of year the brambles are still bare and it’s a good time to see praying mantis egg cases cemented towards the tops of them. Today, however, I can’t find a one. Last year there were five in one stretch of about fifty yards. Each case releases about a hundred mantis (mantis’s?).

More wildlife is seen on these roads than the beaches. White tail deer, red fox, groundhogs, gray squirrels of course, a rare skunk, equally rare wild turkey, rabbits, box and snapping turtles; black, green, cottonmouth and copperhead snakes on occasion, too. Raccoons and possums are plentiful in the area, but I’ve never seen one on our road.

Daffodils have been out and patches in the hundreds at one place are already losing their blossoms. The next big event around here is the spring deluge of pine pollen. The young pine cones sprouting on patches of trees are ready to begin that process with a week or so more of warm weather. This gives us a normally short period when windows can be left open all night to enjoy fresh air. Once the pollen starts, it’s time to button up again.

I often carry a used plastic grocery bag to collect trash. This is a litter free day, but we also have potholes never attended at the river end of the road. Some places along the access road have deposits of gravel washed from the road by heavy rain. The plastic bag will carry about twenty pounds of gravel and oftentimes I’ll carry one of two bags back full. It about keeps up with the new hole production and adds more exercise to the walk.

This road serves nine homes. We have a typical row of mail and newspaper boxes just past the plentiful pothole area where state road maintenance ends. Eight mailboxes are present. Only five homes are occupied full-time. The others are in transition. Some are new waiting perhaps for owners to retire. Others belong to folks who have passed or moved to a retirement home. The empty places usually have weekend and holiday visitors. Periodically a young person or couple will stay a few weeks for some reason, then move on.

Only two other people, a couple about my age, walk this road on a regular basis. Oftentimes the most social interaction we get is at chance meetings on a country road for a few minutes. —–

Walking the Beach #6 (Mar 07)

It’s Saturday and homeowners with dogs are on the beach early today. Izzy and I only walk a few minutes and turn back. The opposite direction, up river, is usually blocked by the outlet of a creek and a small swampy promontory, but the tide is still low enough today for us to make it past the tip and we start upstream. This direction takes us past our home and under the pier of one neighbor. The beaches are narrower this way, perhaps because fewer jettys are used and the few in use don’t extend as far out, nor as high as those we see on our walks downstream. Our small jettys don’t extend to the riverbank, either, as do the others.

This direction is also a shorter route, so I’ll add some road time at the end to boost our walking time to an acceptable exercise level. We cross the beach for six properties in this direction and four of them have banks protected with rock or concrete pieces in contrast with the opposite direction where only one parcel uses some rock. That bank is only three feet high.

Two unprotected parcels on the upstream path have no bank. The land slopes right into the beach and very little erosion occurs from storms or water runoff. They don’t need protection.

The places that do have protection all faced some major loss of riverbank, averaging 1.5 feet a year. One reason protective efforts were made is the nearness of septic drain or leach fields. Losing your septic field closes down a country house. Rules for making these fields are stricter each year in keeping with efforts to protect the Chesapeake Bay and waterways that feed into it, like the James River.

This protection is expensive so river dwellers are always seeking the cheapest way. None are permanent. One parcel started decades back with a bulkhead made with pilings backed by treated planks. That failed within a few years of exposure to seasonal storms, usually northeasters or hurricanes.

The wood bulkhead was replaced with steel railroad rail posts backed with steel plate and poured concrete. It, too, failed as does any flat, vertical surface because of the way it channels wave action. Also, our water is brackish. This means salt water and fresh mixed , the proportion varying with rainfall, tide, and storm activity. Brackish water is very hard on all metals.

The next approach was softball sized rocks inside wire mesh cages called gabions. The mesh is galvanized and vinyl coated. The cages are partially buried in the sand then stacked like bricks. In this case they were only two deep and about four feet high. This was the best protection so far, but a little low and the bank behind was still affected by larger storms were waves were higher than four feet. And eventually the mesh wears out. Then, if not quickly repaired, the rocks, despite their size, slowly escape and make it into the river. Even huge rocks used around lighthouse bases deep underwater move about during storms, although you wouldn’t think the water forces wouldn’t be much different during a storm over quiet times.

Most recently the gabions were covered with large irregular granite chunks weighing 200- 400 lbs and a foot to two feet in length, width, and depth. The banks for two other properties were treated the same, but these, too, are affected some by storms waves. Still, this approach has proven to be the best defense if kept up. The fourth neighbor with bank protection also had gabions stacked two deep and recently covered them with concrete rubble. Although some pieces of this concrete are larger than the granite, the concrete pieces are often flat and more easily moved about by wave action, so require more maintenance.

Bank protection costs run about $300/ft. It’s expensive, but loss of a septic field can make a home unsellable, so you don’t have a lot of choice. The river bank in this section is about 27 feet high and only the bottom six or eight feet is protected. The remainder must be sloped and covered with vegetation that stops erosion, another maintenance issue. So beach walking allows us to check up on all the banks and how they change from year to year. ——

Walking the Beach #5 (Mar 07)

Finally pleasant weather, cool but no breeze, low tide and a t-shirt day. A bluebird is close enough in a bush on the edge of the river bank for a good photo before it flies away.

I notice today that the fancy pier where the two guys had been working has two clothesline arrangements off the end, in addition to its two boat lifts. The handrails on each side of the walkway have low voltage lights, twenty-one of them that extend up the stairs past two intermediate landings to a third on top of the bank. There, that sounds more fancy than yesterday’s description and justifies the name of a fancy pier. No boats moored here or in the lifts yet, though. They’re in storage somewhere for the winter.

The low-low tide (neap I think it’s called) leaves a good expanse of mud flats that extend out about fifty yards in most places. It does vary so, for instance, water covers the flats up to the sandy part of the beach at the largest promontory on our walk. It’s a small projection of land, this promontory, only about fifty yards, again. (This must be the fifty yard area.) The beach is more narrow here, too, around twenty feet. Beach width where only sand or sand-like coverage exists can be pretty wide, but averages only thirty or forty feet, normally, and gently slopes to the line where the mud starts.

Very little debris can be seen sticking up on the mud flats. However, the sides of of seven tires, two of them from construction sized equipment or tractors with the big treads along the way. One tractor tire is buried in the sand and the other lies on top, which I later learn is where it was pulled from the flats a few months back. Someone is making a cleanup attempt, it appears, but hasn’t figured what to do with this huge tire. Getting it to the dump will be difficult due to the size and weight. It can be burned, but will make a huge, black smoke cloud for a long time and probably a mess when it’s finished. So, there it sits, for now.

Any debris on the flats is obscured with a layer of mud. So what looks like a rough patch of mud at one place turns out be a foam rubber seat cushion that gives a startling quicksand feel when stepped on. The flats are pretty level, too, but rippled with wave action from receding tide, and it slopes enough to permit a water line further out.

Those oyster bed markers that look like young trees on second look are more numerous than I thought. There are seventeen of them and other markers in the vicinity could be older weather versions. And, no fancy white pvc pipes are used along this stretch, but they do exist. Some are near our home and can be seen from the James River Bridge while crossing the river.

Warmer weather doesn’t help with the pullups at the old tree. Couldn’t even make four today.—–

Walking the Beach #4 (Mar 07)

A nice day today for a beach walk: low tide, no wind, but cool. The tide is so low we can even get by our biggest fallen tree, one that tumbled down the bank so its root ball is against the bank and tree extends into the river at an angle for about forty-five feet.

Seven oyster boats are at work. Six are probably a mile out, but one, a smaller size, is working close to shore. Two guys working on a dock we pass know the nearest boat operator and yell back and forth a few times. The dock guys also had an odd discussion about measurements, something about 3/8ths equaling 9/16ths. I missed what else they said while trying to figure how the fraction advocate got his result.

The dock being remodeled is the fanciest one on our walk, The boat landing is covered and there’s even a small storage shed. These docks usually connect to the bank top which, here, is at least twenty feet high. The dock is about ten feet up across the beach, a wise move. A second pier we pass under is five feet high and many walkway planks are gone due to high water wave action in the past. Some owners give up on repairs after this happens a few times. In this case the bank is only a few feet high and the pier connects with it, so an upward ramp should have been used to elevate the walkway.

We pass eleven properties on our walk. Besides two piers there are three sets of steps that hang open ended over the bank where they connected to piers before the piers were washed away. Another place has an intact set of steps down the bank to the beach, but no pier. Two places have several pilings out in the water connected together by a clothesline device designed to move a small boat into and out of deeper water depending on the tide condition. Piers and boating are popular with homes along the river, but the luxury is more expensive in our area when bad storms frequently damage them.

At one point I see an interesting bird perched at the top of a tree near a home. Through the binoculars I see that it’s only a pigeon, but then happen to see an eagle perched nearby in another tree at a lower level. Once before my wife and I had seen several pigeons perched above an eagle in a tree near our home. It must be significant because pigeons are easily spooked and also are a food source for eagles. Eventually the eagle flew off while the pigeon did nothing. ——