The Skinny Island Post

I am genetically predisposed to beachcombing.  Six generations of Harrisons, Coopers, and Givens, and all associations by marriage, have ensured that.  And while it is more or less accidental that I am rooted in the dune here on Skinny Island, less that a hundred miles down the same coast from the original family digs on Amelia Island, there does seem to be some pattern in this behavior, some push or draw, that made this happen.  My old Webster’s Dictionary somewhat quaintly and archaically describes a beachcomber as “1: a white man living as a drifter or loafer, esp. on the islands of the South Pacific  2: one who searches along a shore for useful or salable flotsam and refuse.”  Not entirely accurate in this case, but not far off either.  I can relate to the loafer part, and I am white most of the time, but usefulness in this case, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, or beachcomber. You start with shells, of course, and they remain the standard, but any idea of doing anything commercial with them, even on a minimal scale, soon fades, as it should.  No self-respecting beachcomber, (drifter, loafer,) can long sustain any association with business.  It is, as we like to say on the beach, anathema.  And beachcombing is about more than shells, anyway, as it turns out.  Oh, you will continue to fill house a yard with them, as we have, but the draw, I think, is something more nebulous.  There really is no purpose to beachcombing; no intent, no expectations, and thereby it is open to any and all possibility.  You never know what you’re going to find.

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Paddled out today into what looked like just wind-blown junk from shore.  Water cloudy and smelling strongly of fish, two-foot chop expectations, but going anyway for the exercise.  Got out and was pleasantly surprised yet again.  (This is, if not a common scenario, something that happens frequently enough to have a rule attached: If there’s white water, go! It’s breaking.)  Two foot junk turned into three-foot and better, well-formed juice, made dicey by all the chop and side action caused by the on-shore winds.  The kind of wave that, while small, is challenging, and requires focus and concentration. Smallish wave faces jacked on the sand bar, making for a stair-step kind of drop, and then a decent, workable wall to the inside shore break.  Hour plus, mucho fun, and stimulating.  The feeling coming out of the water after one of these sessions is unmatched.  First time this season in the outdoor shower, (no hot water) gazing at the crotons finally coming back after the December freeze.  Okay, then.

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Squash Blossom

We had Squash Blossom Soup for lunch today here at the little hacienda.  Squash Blossom Soup, for the uninitiated, uninformed, or just plain slow, is soup made from squash blossoms, the bloom that occurs on a squash plant (yellow crook-neck, of course,) preceding the development of the individual squash itself.  The blossoms remain attached for a while as the squash matures, and you want to take them in this period, before they wilt, but after the squash appears.   You pick a few, and make a soup.  This had garlic, black pepper, a little turmeric for color and flavoring, and Bulgar wheat for substance and thickening.  Deliciosa!  The first squash will be ready just in time for this Sunday’s dinner.

We have what amounts to a small Zen Garden off the front deck of the little hacienda, modified, of course to conform to the environment, which means that, in addition to some casually placed coquina rock, there are also floats from shrimp boats, and two artfully, but again, naturally arranged horseshoe crab exoskeletons, along with a few conch shells that were here when we moved in.  The idea of a Zen Garden, of course, is to create a symbolic representation of a natural landscape using rock, sand, stone, trees, etc.  It should appear natural and casual, but one is always aware of the extreme tension inherent in such  a contrivance, which stands in complete opposition to the sense of calm and peace it creates.  Tension born of the pathological attention to detail maintaining such a garden requires,we think.  We will have none of that, of course.  Our Zen Garden is essentially self-sufficient, save for a bi-annual removal of opportunistic weeds which appear in the pea rock, but the effect, we believe, in terms of an artistic statement, is the same.  It is a reflection of where and how we live, including a more or less firm commitment to leave well enough alone.

Which leads us to Xeriscaping.  We firmly believe in xeriscaping, but we see a problematic corollary between xeriscaping and Zen Gardens, that being a manipulation of ingredients to simulate naturalness.  Xeriscaping as we understand it entails use of native plants requiring little water or care, which we whole-heartedly support, but in most cases also means placement of said plants in a controlled way.  Our xeriscaping follows a much more natural order.  If it grows, we let it.  There is no watering or fertilizing, and there is no arranging of elements to enhance or create any effect.  When things start growing into the house we cut it back.  That’s about the extent of our intervention.  We are, of course, the

Beach Sunflowers

only edifice forty miles either way, that follows this course.  The house was set up on the dune 60 years ago, everything was left to grow around it, and it does to this day.  This, as you might expect, is appreciated by some, and reviled by others.  On either side of the little hacienda, for miles, are carpet-like grass lawns, requiring massive amounts of water and fertilizer, even in front of the condos.

Aloe

The folks in these places don’t particularly care for the natural look, as evidenced by their glares on passing.  If something isn’t paved or grassed, there must be communists in those weeds. Others find it amusing, and a few offer supportive comments.   We happily share space with beach sunflowers, aloe, stinging nettles, sea grapes, cactus, and the ubiquitous palmetto.  They are fine with arrangement, and so are we.

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Willet

This is a Willet, our favorite shore bird.  A few stay around through the winter months, but their numbers greatly increase in spring and throughout the summer, when their favorite food, the sand flea, appears in abundance.  About a foot tall, most of it legs, it is an exceptionally elegant bird with a long beak and a beautiful black and white pattern on its underwing you only see in flight.  The long legs and beak make it especially suited for extracting sand fleas in the shallow water of retreating waves, where the other sand flea predators, like sandpipers, are too small to venture.  It charges in after the wave and nabs the exposed crustaceans with a quick stab of the beak.  Very territorial, they tolerate nearby sandpipers as no competition, but nothing else, including other Willets.  There is a good deal of posturing and brief winged chases when one encroaches on another, though I have never seen any physical contact.  Unlike most of the other shore birds, the Willet can be quite vocal as well, uttering a crisp, high-pitched, three-note cry when alarmed or threatened.  They nest on the ground, in concealed spots in the dune, often in colonies.  We delight in their presence.

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With the sun tracking north on the horizon towards its summer apogee, we are finding the little hacienda once again, after a long absence, washed with extraordinary light for a few minutes just after sunrise.  It’s a direct hit now through the end of September, when the sun, well into its southerly track, is well to the southeast on rising, and we get only diffuse, refracted light, welcome, but lacking the intensity of these encounters.

It is horizontal and direct, and lasts but a few minutes, changing even as you watch.

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Starting to see many more Coquina Clams on the beach.  For the uninitiated, uninformed, or just plain slow, Coquina Clams, Donax variabilis, are a tiny (usually less than 2.5 cm) bivalve found in abundance on many beaches, especially in the southeast.  Its presence is indicative of a healthy inshore ocean.  A filter feeder, it is an important link in the food chain, consuming small organic particles and algae, then consumed by fish like whiting, and shore birds.  They are more active and abundant in the warmer months, when a single wave may uncover thousands in a ten-square-foot area.  They present in a variety of colors, from orange to blue, some with striping, and are quite mobile, burrowing quickly back into the sand once exposed.  And fresh, they make an excellent soup.  There’s obviously not much meat, but very flavorful.  You can make a quite simple soup or stew, or add white wine, cream, potatoes, just about anything.  Since it is a tiny clam you need a hefty amount to get flavor and substance, but there it is, right in the surfline.  Add some whiting chunks, onion and garlic, and you’ve got a marvelous stew.

So seeing and thinking about Coquinas got me thinking about bivalves in general this morning.   Virtually every shell you find on the beach, with the exception of the conch, murex, and whelk families, which are a kind of spiral construction, are bivalves, meaning there are two nearly identical halves, connected by a flexible ligament called a hinge.  There are more than 9000 species of bivalves.  Some attach to surfaces, some move with currents, some have a digging foot, and some, like scallops, can swim.  Every now and then we find a bivalve (pictured) with the hinge still intact, but by far what you find is one or the other half of one, constituting everybody’s sea shell collection.  I am amazed by the variety and sheer numbers of bivalves in the oceans of the world, and right here on the beaches of Skinny Island.  Everywhere you look in the little hacienda, and even outside are shells.  We’ve got some pretty exotic-looking things, and lots and lots of common  but beautiful representatives.  We’ve got jars of shells, boxes of shells, shells laying about on tables, shells to trip over, shells in plastic bags awaiting some disposition, or other.   There was something alive, mobile, and hungry in each and every one, and much of the beach itself is crushed shells, the carapace of these super abundant, ancient creatures.  Oh, and did I mention how beautiful they are?  An infinite variety of color, texture, and design.  Bivalves rule, man.