Well Bottom Blues

At first I complained about the oil rigs and the hour round trip for anything in town. Being at the ass end of Fort Morgan near the ferry does have one good thing going for it: the chance for a solitary walk beyond all the beach people to where the only thing on two legs besides me are seabirds.

I set out towards what I keep calling the spit because that’s what it looks like from where all our tents and stuff are, but I discovered today that it’s just the gentle curve of the beach as it begins to wind around toward the ferry. Today was no mama tern to give me that look as I approached her chicks, so I wandered past the little inlet where most of the birds hang out and then hit a long empty stretch. The only thing in sight was a lordly and isolate heron just above the surf.

He gave me a ruthless side eye as I approached and so I climbed higher up to the very edge of the walkable sand. He would shift position 6 inches or ao but mostly stood his ground and slowly spun around to keep an eye on me. I went all the way up to the edge of the dune so he wouldn’t be disturbed and he let me pass.

I came to a long set of well sunk creosoted pilinga paralle to the dunes which seem to serve no purpose. Perhaps these were once a fence of some sort. I kept waiting for one of the seabirds to perch there but they seem to be unappealing to them. At one point the edge of the dunes was very near the tide line and I climbed up for a beautiful vista of scrub and salt marsh with no signs of humanity.

I didn’t make it all the way to the fishing beach where I could see a small cluster of people before I turned around. The imaginary spit I set out was a bend too far and it was getting hot. As I was coming up on the heron again so were a mother and teenaged sons coming from the oppositedirection. The heron fled to the edge of the dunes and one of the kids started up towards him. I don’t know what stopped him. Perhaps a sharp word for his mom. If he had gone for a stone (thankfully there were none) I would have chuckled one at the kid. He backed down and their little crowd went past. The heron returned to the surfline, and once again granted me a watchful safe passage.

It was just after high tide and I scanned the sand but there’s nothing along the beach here but small scallops and shiny fragments. I did find a beautiful curved piece of a hand size clam and dropped it in my pocket. When I got back to the tent I saw my nephew’s children had left a pile of small shells on their mother’s chair, and I dropped my one find among them. It was my last day. I had reached the end of the beach after all. I went back to the edge of the surf to finish and drown my Gloria de Cubana Serie R, then trudged back across the soft sand with my best snowshoeing high gait to find cold water.