Lost Woods (14 page)

I remember my own first visit to the beach at Peaked Hill Bars. From the highway a sandy track led off through thickets of pine. The horizon lay high on the crest of a near dune. Soon the track was lost, the trees thinned out, the world was all sand and sky.

From the crest of the first hill I hoped for a view of the sea. Instead there was another hill, across a wide valley. Everything in this dune world spoke of the forces that had created it, of the wind that had shifted and molded the materials it received from the sea, here throwing the surface of a dune into firm ridges, there smoothing it into swelling curves. At last I came to a break in the seaward line of dunes and saw before me the beach and the sea.

On the shore below me there was at first no sign of any living thing. Then perhaps half a mile down the beach I saw a party of gulls resting near the water’s edge. They were silent and intent, facing the wind. Whatever communion they had at that moment was with the sea rather than with each other. They seemed almost to have forgotten their own kind and the ways of gulls. When once a white, feathered form drifted down from the dunes and dropped to the sand beside them none of the group challenged him. I approached them slowly. Each time I crossed that invisible line beyond which no human trespasser might come; the gulls rose in a silent flock and moved to a more distant part of the sands. Everything in that scene caused me to feel apart, remembering that the relation of birds to the sea is rooted in millions of years, that man came but yesterday.

There have been other shores where time stood still. On Buzzards Bay there is a beach studded with rocks left by the glaciers. Barnacles grow on them now, and a curtain of rockweeds drapes them below the tide line. The bay shore of mud and sand is crossed by the winding trails of many periwinkles. On the beach at every high tide are cast the shells and empty husks of all that live offshore: the gold and silver shells of the rock oysters or jingles, the curious little half decks or slipper shells, the brown, fernlike remains of
Bugula
, the moss animal, the bones of fishes and the egg strings of whelks.

Behind the beach is a narrow rim of low dunes, then a wide salt marsh. This marsh, when I visited it on an evening toward the end of summer, had filled with shore birds since the previous night; their voices were a faint, continuous twittering. Green herons fished along the creek banks, creeping along at the edge of the tall grasses, placing one foot at a time with infinite care, then with a quick forward lunge attempting to seize some small fish or other prey. Farther back in the marsh a score of night herons stood motionless. From the bordering woods across the marsh a mother deer and her two fawns came down to drink silently, then melted back into their forest world.

The salt marsh that evening was like a calm, green sea – only a little calmer, a little greener than the wide sheet of the bay on the other side of the dunes. The same breeze that rippled the surface of the bay set the tips of the marsh grasses to swaying in long undulations. Within its depths the marsh concealed the lurking bittern, the foraging heron, the meadow mouse running down long trails overarched by grass stems, even as the watery sea concealed the lurking squids and fishes and their prey. Like the foam on the beach when the wind had whipped the surface waters into a light froth, the even more delicate foam of the sea lavender flecked the barrier of dunes and ran to the edge of the marsh. Already the fiery red of the glasswort or marsh samphire flickered over the higher ground of the marsh, while offshore mysterious lights flared in the waters of the bay at night. These were signs of approaching autumn, which may be found at the sea’s edge before even the first leaf shows a splash of red or yellow.

The sea’s phosphorescence is never so striking alongshore as in late summer. Then some of the chief light producers of the water world have their fall gatherings in bays and coves. Just where and when their constellations will form no one can predict. And the identity of these wheeling stars of the night sea varies. Usually the tiny glittering sparks are exceedingly minute, one-celled creatures, called dinoflagellates. Larger forms, flaring with a ghostly blue-white phosphorescence, may be comb jellies, crystal-clear and about the size of a small plum.

On beach and dune and over the flat vistas of salt marsh, too, the advancing seasons cast their shadows; the time of change is at hand. Mornings, a light mist lies over the marshes and rises from the creeks. The nights begin to hint of frost; the stars take on a wintry sparkle; Orion and his dogs hunt in the sky. It is a time, too, of color – red of berries in the dune thickets, rich yellow of the goldenrod, purple and lacy white of the wild asters in the fields. In the dunes and on the ocean beach the colors are softer, more subtle. There may be a curious purple shading over the sand. It shifts with the wind, piles up in little ridges of deeper color like the ripple marks of waves. When first I saw this sand on the northern Massachusetts coast, I wondered what it was. According to local belief the purple color comes from some seaweed, left on the shore, dried, and reduced to a thin film of powder. Years later I found the answer. I discovered drifts of the same purple color amid the coarse sand of my own shore in Maine – sand largely made up of broken shell and rock, fragments of sea-urchin spines, opercula of snails. I brought some of the purple sand to the house. When I put a pinch of it under the microscope I knew at once that this came from no plant – what I saw was an array of gems, clear as crystal, returning a lovely amethyst light to my eyes. It was pure garnet.

The sand grains scattered on the stage of my microscope spoke in their own way of the timeless, unhurried spirit of earth and sea. They were the end product of a process that began eons ago deep inside the earth, continued when the buried mineral was brought at last to the surface, and went on through millenniums of time and, it may be, through thousands of miles of land and sea until, tiny, exquisite gems of purest color, they came temporarily to rest at the foot of a glacier-scarred rock.

Perhaps something of the strength and serenity and endurance of the sea – of this spirit beyond time and place – transfers itself to us of the land world as we confront its vast and lonely expanse from the shore, our last outpost.

The shore might seem beyond the power of man to change, to corrupt. But this is not so. Unhappily, some of the places of which I have written no longer remain wild and unspoiled. Instead, they have been tainted by the sordid transformation of “development” – cluttered with amusement concessions, refreshment stands, fishing shacks – all the untidy litter of what passes under the name of civilization. And so noisy are these attributes of man that the sea cannot be heard. On all coasts it is the same. The wild seacoast is vanishing.

Five thousand miles of true ocean beach may seem inexhaustible wealth, but it is not. The National Park Service has recently published a survey of the remaining undeveloped areas on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. (The results of a Pacific survey are yet to be released.) It described the situation it discovered as “foreboding,” for “almost every attractive seashore area from Maine to Mexico that is accessible by road has been acquired for development purposes, or is being considered for its development possibilities. The seashore is rapidly vanishing from public use.”

The Service asked that public-minded citizens and local, State and Federal Governments take the necessary steps, before it is too late, “to preserve this priceless heritage.” Of the open shoreline of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts only 6½ per cent is owned by the states or nation. The Park Service urged that at least 15 per cent of the general shoreline of our east coast should be publicly owned. This means acquiring an additional 320 miles at once. This must be done if we are to insure that we ourselves, and generations to follow, may know what the shore is like, may read the meaning and message of this strip between land and sea.

In its effort to awaken the public to the threatened loss of all natural seashore, the Park Service is recalling a recommendation made following a survey in 1935. Then, just a human generation ago (a mere second in earth history) the situation was very different. At that time the Park Service urged that 12 major strips, totaling 437 miles of beach, be preserved for public use. Only one of these was acquired. All the rest of these strips, except one, have since gone into private or commercial development.

One of the areas then recommended could have been bought at that time for $9000 a mile. Now, thanks to the post – World War II boom in seashore property, its price tag is $110,000 a mile.

To convert some of the remaining wild areas into State and National parks, however, is only part of the answer. Even public parks are not what nature created over the eons of time, working with wind and wave and sand. Somewhere we should know what was nature’s way; we should know what the earth would have been had not man interfered. And so, besides public parks for recreation, we should set aside some wilderness areas of seashore where the relations of sea and wind and shore – of living things and their physical world – remain as they have been over the long vistas of time in which man did not exist. For there remains, in this space-age universe, the possibility that man’s way is not always best.

17

[1950–1952]

Four Fragments from Carson’s Field Notebooks

THE EDGE OF THE SEA
was conceived as a guide to the shore life of the Atlantic coast. Beginning in 1950, Carson traveled from Maine to Florida studying tidal ecology. These fragments from Carson’s field notebooks were written during several research trips to the remote beaches of the Carolinas and Georgia.

Carson’s field observations were never so narrow or self-absorbing that she missed the wider angle of vision or failed to relate her specific environment to the larger evolution of life. She was always an immediate participant intimately in touch with the life of her fellow creatures. Her notebooks testify to her compassion, her capacity for wonder, and her humility in the face of creation.

Saturday

HIKED NORTH
on beach. Very windy, a quick shower or two, much froth. Saw a little one-legged sanderling hopping along hunting food. Without my glasses I couldn’t be sure whether the injured leg was cut off or drawn up under the body, but it was completely useless. Still he ran and probed, not venturing as near the surf as they usually do. When I came near he wheeled out over the water, his sharp “pit, pil” quickly lost in the sound of the waves. I thought of the long miles of travel ahead of him and wondered how long he would last. As I came back down the beach I saw him again still hopping along bravely.

A very few ghost crabs were out, but scuttled back quickly into their holes. I sat down on a box to wait for one to come out, feeling like a cat watching a mouse hole, but soon it began to rain and I moved on.

Saw tracks of a shore bird – probably a sanderling, and followed them a little, then they turned toward the water and were soon obliterated by the sea. How much it washes away, and makes as though it had never been. Time itself is like the sea, containing all that came before us, sooner or later sweeping us away on its flood and washing over and obliterating the traces of our presence, as the sea this morning erased the footprints of the bird.

On the way back I met the little one-legged sanderling again, the one I had seen Saturday afternoon. Remembering how the legs of the normal ones twinkle as they dash up and down the beach, it was amazing to see how fast this little fellow got about just hopping, hopping on his good right leg. This time I could see that his left leg is only a short stump less than an inch long. I wondered if some animal, maybe a fox, had caught it in the Arctic, or whether it had gotten into a trap. Their way of feeding being what it is, one would say he would have been eliminated before this as “unfit” – yet he must be even tougher than his two-legged comrades. That last word is a misnomer, he had no companions – either time I saw him – just hunting alone, he would hop, hop, hop, toward the surf; probing and jabbing busily with opened bill, turn and hop away from the advancing foam. Only twice did I see him have to take to his wings to escape a wetting. It made my heart ache to think how tired his little leg must be, but his whole manner suggested a cheerfulness of spirit and a gameness which must mean that the God of fallen sparrows has not forgotten him.

Little Dog

THE NEXT DAY,
out on these same flats in early morning for low tide, I saw
Callianassa
scooting around in pools left in depressions – thanks to the help of a little dog. I first saw him away out on the flats, apparently by himself, and I thought he was chasing birds. There were the usual willets and a snowy egret and they’d get up and move on when he approached. But he was interested in the shallow pools of water and would wade in and go trotting around, his stumpy tail wagging constantly. I first wondered if he was noticing the little glittering reflections that were dancing all over the bottom, for the breeze kept little ripples stirring and the sun was very bright. When I came back down the beach later, he was still out, trotting around in the same pool. Everyone had gone in; the tide had turned, and I was worried for fear he might be cut off – he was very far out – get bewildered about where the shore was, and drown. So I decided to go out after him. He just wouldn’t be distracted, but went on trotting in circles. Then I saw the darting of the little, almost transparent forms of shrimp and knew what was attracting him. In the end I had to pick him up and carry him a little distance; then he scampered ahead to another pool and resumed his shrimp hunting, but since that was near the upper beach I didn’t worry. [ … ]

There are a fair number of
Diapatra
tubes [plumed worms] out on these flats. In some of the depressions (winding ones almost like creek beds) that seem always to have water even when tide is out – you see many tracks winding back and forth. When you can see where one ends (and sometimes there will be movement evident) you dig down and find a live moon snail moving along.

I think
Callianassa
holes differ in appearance according to the kind of bottom: where it is sandy you get the little excreted pellets looking like chocolate, and scattered closely around mouth of hole but not much mounded up. Where it is muddy, you seem to get elevated chimneys. The mud is sort of coiled, as though squeezed out of pastry tube with fancy fillips. [ … ] Some are flattened – others go up to a peak. On digging, I could get canal going down into sand, but could never get shrimp.

While digging, found empty
Cystoidean
tube.

Out here, I also watched sand dollars burying themselves in sand. You see a broad track, explore end of it carefully with fingers and find dollar. If you dig one out, it will immediately start to disappear into the sand – there is a considerable current stirred up all around edge, and body starts to dip under at forward edge. It takes it only a couple of minutes to disappear under sand again.

Saint Simon Island, Georgia (1952)

ON THE BEACH
in front of the Coast Guard station, and from there north to the Inlet, an immense stretch of sand is exposed at low tide. One can walk out probably half a mile, almost dry-shod, it being necessary, here and there, to wade through just enough depth of water to wet one’s shoes. The upper beach – i.e. from high tide line down perhaps several hundred feet – is smooth sand, but farther down there must be a mixture of mud or clay which gives a firmer consistency. This part of the beach, when the tide is out, is always deeply grooved with ripple marks – a pattern of wavelets sculptured and preserved for the tidal interval in this curiously firm substance. [ … ]

On the evening of April 17 I had a wonderful hour on these flats from 6:30–7:30, coming in almost at dark. Low tide was about 8:15, so the water still had almost an hour to ebb, but really incredible expanses of sand were exposed. Away out there, so far from the buildings on shore, it was nice to think that this wide tidal area belonged to the sea and couldn’t be built on. Out there, there are no sounds but those of the wind and the sea and the birds.

It is curious how the sound of the wind moving over the water makes one sound, and the water sliding over the sand, and tumbling down over its own wave, forms another. The bird voice of these flats is the call of the willets. I have a new idea of these birds after seeing them here. I had always associated them with quiet water and salt marshes instead of the ocean beach. When I went down tonight one was standing at the edge of the water, looking out over it and giving its loud urgent cry. Presently there was an answer, and this bird flew to join the other – they greeted each other noisily and one flew off. [ … ]

These flats become even more wonderful as dusk approaches and the only light is that reflected from the occasional pools of water. Then bird forms become dark silhouettes, with no color discernable. Sanderlings scoot across the sand like little ghosts, and here and there, larger, darker forms of willets stand out. Often I could come very close to them before they would take alarm – the sanderlings by running, the willets by flying up, crying. Three black skimmers flew along the ocean edge while it was still light enough to see color.

As I was walking back in the near dark, I could see them flitting around like big moths. One “skimmed” along within a few yards of me, following a “creek” of water that wound across the flats. There seemed to be little fish in this – there were disturbances at the surface, sending little circular ripples spreading out.

Dunes

WHAT PECULIAR BRAND OF MAGIC
is inherent in that combination of sand and sky and water it is hard to say. It is bleak and stark. But somehow it is not forbidding. Its bleakness is part of its quiet, calm strength.