OBSERVED: a moderate to enormous amount of trash, all kinds; none of it, however, in the water. The close-up photo contains all pieces of plastics, different kinds - one tangled in with seaweed branches, one was shell-like, one was a rope pieces, etc. Arranged together, they looked surprisingly natural.
COLLECTED: nothing
Very recently, I have seen some strange and some funny things on our beach.
First, the curious, unsettling and bizarre...
- (Am I in Miami?)...A big black man in a tiny red and white speedo, and a partly top-less photo shoot with two young busty women and an old man taking place further up the beach.
- Picked up two bottles: one water bottle, one empty gallon jug that held a used needle. Perhaps a considerate junkie who then "forgot" to take the bottles to the trash?
- The two collections of snuffed-out cigarette butts so carefully exterminated that their smoking ends were pinched off and clean. There they were - right at the water's edge. I could easily imagine two people side-by-side in their metal folding chairs taking a break to watch the water or perhaps their child, and they chain-smoked through the whole thing, all while the tide was out. Then, finishing their conversation, they left their tidy souvenirs behind for the tide to come back in and take out and disperse (as it eventually will; only in this instance, I took them to the trash bin).
- And lastly there was the one from 2 weeks ago: walking up to my cousin and aunt sitting in one of the rented, wooden double-deck chairs, an umbrella opened over-head, and between them in the sand was a used Trojan (wrapper included). The only thing to properly do was what my aunt did - gracefully cover it with sand and continue with our conversation.
And for the funny...
Of course, it cam from my son, T. OCEAN. While walking down the sandy path to the shore, a youngish woman passed us by in what looked like a work-out swimsuit, bag flung over her shoulder, sunglasses on. She gave us a nice smile as she breezed past us. As we approached the beach's edge, I see that she has gone right up to the water, feet in the washed up waves, and is doing several yoga asanas facing out into the sea. T. OCEAN, knowing a few of them himself, begins to imitate her every move; only she has no idea he is doing this since he is behind her and out of sight. This goes on for quite some time, and the three older ladies in their beach chairs were watching the entire thing, giving me a 'thumbs-up' all the while. Unfortunately, my camera failed me, and an opportunity to capture a genuinely funny moment is now only in memory.
To the just plain cool...
Several weeks ago I noticed a new bird on our beach. It may be some kind of a crane. It's almost a bluish tint with beautiful white streaks across its cheeks and a white single plume behind its head. For the first time, it stayed long enough for me to notice it was hunting hermit crabs in the wet sand after the water pulled back out into the ocean. It did not seem to mind people around as long as it wasn't being chased. Mostly, it just wanted dinner.
Finally...even though the water was still comparatively choppy, it had calmed down enough to take T. OCEAN out past the shore break where the sand dips down and waves roll rather than fall. Holding him at my side, he kicks and kicks and kicks, and experiments with paddling his arms. We take turns doing this AND riding the long (and now more easy) shoreline - rolling and dipping and crashing into one another. It is two hours of pure fun, my swimsuit FILLED with sand.
Your,
Little Mama Sea Keeper
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