Nice Quiet Day at the Beach

It was a quiet day on this nameless beach, which guidebooks once labeled "crowded and tacky," to the delight of those of us who love it. On this beautiful mid-summer day, as you can see, it was packed as usual with loud and obnoxious people. Well, not really. This is where the Salp came up one stormy day, and where the Salp was laid to rest, returning to the great salty all-of-it all. Here is the path to the beach, right where the explorer Clark's men had their salt-making camp. The surf pines and salal are native, as is the little yellow flower growing in the sand. Salal berries are good to eat, and also work as appetite suppressants if you are hungry. I hope Lewis and Clark learned that when they were here, starving, in 1806. Last night, a light rain dimpled the sand, but today is flawlessly blue. A little aluminum crab fishing boat was extraordinarily close in, because the waves are so clement.



This morning the tide was low and it was a great day for dogs, especially the wet kind. The photo directly above is of a little girl in a bikini with her dog, Bella, a soaking wet, excited, delighted seven-month-old spaniel. The little girl, later on in the day, was out boarding with no wet suit at all. This afternoon, the surf was gentle, warm on the rising tide, so many little kids besides Bella's companion were out wave boarding. The long board surfers left long s-marks on the damp sand as they trudged back to town from the Cove, where they'd no doubt had a nice time riding up and down, up and down on the gentle, so not-gnarly, waves. They seemed in pretty good spirits, anyway. The tire tracks are from the life guard truck, which came down at about 1:30 to see if the clammers were making it back over the low-tide lagoon. No one else drives on this beach, where the surviving gulls from the slaughter in Ocean Beach are now gathering. Around noon, when the tide was way out, and there were clammers but they didn't seem to mind that they were not very good at it - all except a lady who worked the rising tide, grabbing sand crabs with her bare hands, fast as a heron, and slipping them into a gallon jug half-filled with water. Later, her husband was surf casting. The other clammers were using spades, not the tubes with handles that locals use - way more effective. I, of course, was wading, admiring the pryrites and lines of white shell, bands of gold and white, on the lovely sand, composed of granite and basalt, sandstone and limestone, with garnet and amethyst, crystal and jade, mixed in. Then I lay down in the dunes to have a nap. This little castle was nearby. I liked the moat, made out of a piece of cedar bark.