PHOTOS from the last couple of weeks....running along the shore break, rainbow as backdrop, drumming with found sticks...
OBSERVED over the past 2 weeks: more and more and more debris along the shoreline. Hurricanes Earl and Igor, and other smaller storms have brought so much trash to our beaches that I was overwhelmed today to even know where or if to begin picking up anything. Most days recently I have been able to take a bag-full away and feel like I made some small accomplishment. Today was not one of those days.
I have read about the recent confirmation by scientists who concluded that at least 3 of the 5 world's oceanic gyres contain a kind of "plastic soup"; and the only way to clean it is to prevent the debris from getting in there in the first place. After all, they say, it's difficult to clean once the trash gets into the ocean because it's so dispersed.
Since coming to the beach almost daily, I have a slightly different opinion. It seems to me that the ocean does a fine job of cleaning itself, even utilizing the powerful storms out at sea to help this process along. The waves deposit all forms of unwanted matter onto shore, thereby making it easier to remove. The trick is to do so before the next high tide comes to take it all back out again.
I sometimes imagine what it would be like if I had the time to come out every evening (on my own) with a rake and many large bins and just sweep along the shore line....but this is not only my beach or my town or my ocean. Realistically, I'll do what I can when I can.
In the meantime, my little boy has learned to sift through the seaweed tangled mess and pull out the sea-pods and sticks, only to joyfully throw them back out into the water so that he may watch them come back to shore again, repeating this process like a boy-Sisyphus. Observing him, I find the balance between the child who is able to recognize what is unnatural and destructive, and what is so intuitively his own place of beauty that he is always at home there.
Your,
Little Mama Sea Keeper
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