Walking the Beach #85 (Jan 08)

It’s freezing but warmer than yesterday mainly because the air is almost still so we face very little wind chill. We had about an inch of snow a few days ago. Temperatures are staying low and reaching the high 20’s some nights, but warm enough so hardly any snow remains. The day before the snow we had periods of rain and sleet with dry periods as we walked. Snow came late the next day, so we avoided a walk that weather.

The cold hasn’t prevented watermen from harvesting oysters. Today the usual eight tongers are mid river and the small dredger manned by two guys is close to shore near the turnaround point. One day eighteen mid-river tongers appeared, the maximum so far.

Izzy is wearing a fleece-lined jacket that hampers movement some and he may not like, but on sunless days, like today, he needs it. Sometimes it prevents his passage through beached brush and fallen tree tops and once pulled it right off as he passed through. Today I carry him over a couple spots but on the way back remove the coat so he can make his own way. A short ways later, though, he started shivering proving the coat’s value, and it went back on.

Water weeping out of the bank has formed groups of icicles one to two feet long at a half dozen places. The cold also makes nuggets and baseball-sized clumps of soil – mostly clay – break loose leaving a sprinkling along the base. A few pieces roll several feet towards the river leaving individual tracks in softer sand.

A single black rubber glove with yellow cuff that washed up a couple weeks ago may have a mate. It may just be moving up and down the beach or a pair that haven’t been visible on the same day, so I have to watch closer to see if there’s a right and a left or just the one each time one appears. Such challenges are found on the beach!

Sand covered the small upside-down bathtub that became visible near the beginning of our walk so for about a year there have only been a few days that it was visible. Sand has also smoothed over most rubble and debris, the clumps of broken limestone, blocks of clay, concrete and shells. Some of the excelsior material that must be a form of water weed seems to float to the top of the sand, but fallen leaves and even most of the persistent tulip tree seeds are now gone. Leaves from cypress trees lasted the longest and migrated only about fifty yards downstream, but are now mostly gone.

We had a few days of high-high tides with some wind awhile back that deposited a wheel with tire amongst tree branches and trunk we crawl under just before the promontory. All the other discarded tires we see lack that center part. This one looks to be from a tractor or commercial truck.

Bird life is erratic in this weather. Small birds, the sparrow, wrens and finches, are around in small numbers in the brush at the top of the bank, but herons and eagles are rare sights. On the other hand the pelican that landed near the small dredger a few days ago was unusual, and every few days a flock of twenty to 100 canada geese appear on the water. This morning an unusual sight was a group of eight small water birds near the shore that dived as a group. The cloud cover and low sun reduced the light level so the birds appear to be black. They weren’t unusual except that after seeing them and then finding them suddenly gone when you looked made made you wonder where they went until they suddenly popped back up.

Walking the Beach #84 (Jan 08)

We went from high temperatures in the 40’s to the 70’s yesterday and today. The tide is high and just a slight breeze, not enough to properly cool us on the way back when Izzy and I are the warmest.

Small patches of an excelsior-looking stuff is strung along the water line.  It began showing up about ten days ago and may be decaying water weed. The last couple days a few mustard colored patches have also appeared. It looks a little like pollen except for being the wrong time of year. Lots of tulip tree seeds are still strung along the beach, too.

The water is quite clear compared with muddy days. That’s due to the lack of wind to stir up bottom mud and rain running off farm fields.

A brown plastic teacup style coffee cup washed up close to the beach yesterday and hasn’t moved today, just floating there right-side up. Another glove, black rubber with yellow cuff, for the right hand has appeared, too. The biggest find is what looks like an arrow head or spear head. It’s a couple inches long and the tip seems to be missing. A neighbor thinks it might be a scraping tool.

Another slab of blue clay has detached from the bank near the turnaround point. It looks to be about the same size as the last.

Older blocks of this stuff that’s submerged along the shore releases little bits under water that wash into small windrows just like the sand and shell pieces. The difference is that the these innocent rows of blue clay are very sticky and cling like glue if you step in any.

Dew has moistened a thin layer of sand this morning. As you walk the damp sand clings to your soles and sprays off the heels with each step.

The oyster tongers are out in force, twelve boats this morning. The small single dredger is also at his usual place, only one operator this morning and no visible dog.   It never met Daisy and she is now being kept close to home due to complaints from a neighbor.

Yesterday a larger dredger accompanied the smaller for the first time. It’s surprising to see one so close to the shore.

Jet contrails have been visible most mornings for the last week. One morning twelve active trails were visible. Today only three are present. The many old trails are scattered across the sky looking like thinly spread pickup sticks.

Walking the Beach #83 (Jan 08)

 

It’s finally getting cold so there’s ice beginning to accumulate along the high tide line and icycles hanging down the riverbank. It’ll be down in the teens at night for a couple days if the variable weather reports are accurate this time. Meanwhile we’ve had several days of rain of an inch or more. The last rain loosened clay at two points on the river bank. The clay was mixed with soil or sand at the first place just where we reach the beach and washed over the beach like a five-foot-wide brown stain across the gray sand. Close to the twenty-foot high bank a couple pickup truck loads of the stuff are piled up, gooey and treacherous, unlike the second place down the beach around the promontory. A sheet of blue clay, there, a foot thick and some twenty feet square detached from the forty-foot high bank and collapsed into a chunky tumbled pile at the base.

A small sink hole has reappeared in the sand on the high side of the first jetty of concrete blocks close to the bank. Sand on the high side is level with the top of the concrete but below the base of these, several feet lower, on the other side, downstream. The hole is caused by water washing under the foot of the concrete hollowing out a space causing the sand to spill or leach out until the sink hole appears on the opposite side. Right now the hole is several small holes over a couple feet, close to the concrete and looks to be only a few inches deep. The previous version of this had filled in some months back when the tide and weather drove enough sand over the area. It takes a very high tide or strong wind to push sand this far in, fifty or sixty feet.

The sky is very clear today, but no contrails are visible except for very short tails from three jets high above. It’s windy, too, and more so on the way back; enough to blow a little sand across the beach. And with the cold it makes me wish for gloves.

Birds are still pretty scarce, but an eagle was out two days ago along with two herons. Usually only one heron is seen as we walk along. Daisy, the new black dog, is pretty scare, too, the last couple days. It might be due to the colder weather, but more likely that she just hasn’t been let out by the time Izzy and I do our walk.

Sand has been moved around enough over the last couple weeks so that the space under the one fallen tree trunk I have to crawl under requires getting down on your hands and knees instead of duck-walking under it. The tides have begun to move some of this out. The difference in height looks to be only about six inches between having to crawl or duck walk. At low-low tide the whole tree can be skirted, and close to the bank there’s a place where you can climb over at high tide, but going under is easier for an older guy….

No water men are out at all today. Days when the far-out oyster tongers have appeared they usually number in four to nine boats. Only one boat was out on New Year’s Day, the dredger that comes in close. Only Izzy was along that day and we encountered a black dog that looked much like Daisy except it had a dark collar while Daisy’s is fire engine red. Izzy knew it wasn’t Daisy right off and acted his normal aggressive little-dog self, driving off his opponent. The fellow in the close-in boat called to us then and explained it’s his dog. He lets the dog swim to shore for exercise, then swim back to the boat. Later I got a photo of the dog perched on the boat’s bow barking at a pelican that made a nearby water landing. I’ve not seen any other pelicans recently so that was another surprise.

On the way back I found a chunk of fossilized whale vertebrae about the size of two hands clasped together. It may not be part of a vertebrae, but seems to be to big and solid for any other part. It was only a portion of the vertebrae with part of one wing. The location was much further downstream than where some ten or eleven pieces have appeared in the past.