Michael – Page 5 – North Cape May

January 5, 2022January 8, 2022

Rosemary by the shore

When we bought our home in North Cape May years ago, we stumbled upon the LCMR plant sale, a work of love by Joanie Dilling and her students. We paid a couple of bucks for a small rosemary plant, planted it next to the house, and pretty much left it alone.

The tiny plant is now a sprawling lovely aromatic mess threatening to take over the driveway, and continues to give and give and give.

Every time I walk by, I stroke a few sprigs then bring my fingers to my nose, remembering again what I thought I could not forget.

The periwinkle flowers. feed the few foolish bees who wander out of the hive on the rare, deliciously warm December days.

The sprawling trunk holds its own beauty, wood arising out of the Earth like a writhing Naga.

A few sprigs of fresh rosemary will run you $2.49 at the local Acme, about the cost of the seedling I carried home, started by a struggling high school student shepherded by a kind woman from Ocean City.

Or you can swing by here, snip a few sprigs, and thank the universe for living in a land as blessed as our neighborhood.

If you’re local, you can grow one, too. We are blessed by our bay, our skies, our weather, and our sand.

January 4, 2022January 8, 2022

Winter sand

A blue claw sitting on a late December beach at dusk grabs my interest–I’ve spent a lifetime appreciating the beauty, the feistiness, and the tastiness of the blue crab. The blue on this gray wintry day is startling.

So I took a picture.

And now, looking at the photograph, I marvel at the sand. Pieces of rock, thousand to millions to billions of years old , broken into tiny pieces, mixed with mortal shells, a mishmash of shapes and colors.

The edge of the bay tells stories of time, of mortality, of the unimaginable power of eons of time and tides.

With every step you add to the story.

January 3, 2022January 22, 2022

A snowy day

Snow Guy warned us–he mysteriously appears each winter to greet us as we amble down to the bay.

Last week I walked barefoot along the water’s edge, wandering and wondering. The gray skies hid the sun, but the signs were there.

Harpoons on the Bay knew it was coming–the Christmas lights teased me as I walked back up from my walk.

Winter has been coming for a while now. The ghost crabs are deep in the sand and the laughing gulls are gone, replaced by the diving ducks seen in winter.

Enjoy the snow while you can. Memorial Day is less than 5 months away.

January 2, 2022January 8, 2022

Our town’s heartbeat

We do not have a town village nor a town clock, but we do have the ferries, coming and going and coming and going, day by day by day.

In the winter months, the ferry’s horn welcomes us at dawn–a short toot just before 7 AM, then the familiar toooooooot toot-toot-toot a minute later–like the town clock bells of old.

You can gather the weather report without electronic media. If you can hear their horns clearly, a lovely southern breeze promises a decent day. If you hear nothing at all, beware, a nor’easter may be blowing in soon.

You may hear tales of drama–TOOT-TOOT-TOOT-TOOT-TOOT –as yet another squid plays footsies with a vessel with a displacement of over 4 million pounds.

And finally, if you have a grand baby old enough to wave from the jetty (but not old enough yet to shave). a friendly captain will often toot a hello for her, and she will be a ferry fan for life.

January 1, 2022January 8, 2022

Clamming on New Year’s Eve

Yesterday was warm for late December, warm enough to clam barefoot. So I did.

Mudflats remind me of my mortality, not that anyone needed much reminding this year. Every empty shell had the same ending to share.

The back bay waters were quiet. A reddish-brown sea weed has, for now, taken over the shallows. A few shotgun blasts broke the quiet. Someone enjoys ducks as much as I enjoy clams.

A small blue claw clung to my rake for a few moments, then let go–I saw it scurrying back under the brown blanket of seaweed.

Happy New Year!

Recipe

October 31, 2020January 22, 2022

A perfect November tomato

November, 2019, while still on the vine.

Plato was wrong about the perfect.

I do not know what the word “perfect” means. I know what we think it means, but its meaning crumbles in my hand when I squeeze it.

So here’s a tomato, an unexpectedly beautiful November tomato I found in the garden last fall.

It’s not perfect in a Platonic sense, but it was perfect for that particular day in this particular life.

I ate it, of course (what else would one do with a tomato), but its image lingers because I took a picture of it when I saw it. A picture is all that is left of this tomato–soon after this photo it became tiny particles breathed and pissed out of my body.

The Greeks have proven troublesome, at least to me. John gets right to the heart of the problem. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God.

Logos.

Western culture picked that up and ran, creating all kinds of masterpieces we ogle (or are supposed to ogle, anyway) while the tomatoes get eaten, breathed and pissed out, then reconstructed again, over and over.

The perfect tomato above no longer exists but still feels real. Photographs and words will do that.

Halloween tomato, picked this morning (October 231, 2020)–it reflects the kind of year we’re having.

A spoken story dies with the storyteller. The parts of the stories that matter or resonate or are crudely funny get passed along to younger mortals, who, after sharing stories and eating tomatoes that they exhale and piss out, also eventually die.

Somewhere along the way, several thousand years ago, written language was invented. When the stories can no longer be changed by the wiser among us, words become our prisons.

We work for words, for the abstract, for the future, for money, for fame, for recognition, for a lot of things, but unless you are directly working with the ground or water or air, you are living in a world that does not exist. Literally.

When we confuse the abstract with the real, and we do–every single day–we are reliving the story of original sin, a story that survives because it’s a story that matters.

And still does.

Pay more attention to the voices of the living. The letters of the past are no longer edited, no longer ours. Let them go.

January 6, 2020January 8, 2022

Beach walk, January 5, 2020

A peek at the ferry through a North Cape May jetty

The Christmas crowds are almost gone now; the big display on Town Bank Road was not lit up Friday night. The warm holiday lights give way to the wintry darkness. The beach belongs, again, to those who need it.

A few herring gulls, a lone sand piper too busy to worry about me. If there were any scoters or loons, I did not see them in the frothy waves.

Delaware Bay, Jersey side, January 5, 2020

A nice blow from the northwest built up foam on the edge of the bay. Small pieces break off and scamper up the beach like scalded squirrels, quickly dissipating into nothingness.

If you kick along the waves’ edges, you can kick up a storm of beach foam balls, skittering up the beach. Child’s play, but my birthday is closer to the 1800s than to the new year, and anyway, no one else was on the beach to see my foolishness.

I found a small knobbed whelk shell and a large quahog shell, a piece of muscle still attached, at least a few decades old. This part of the bay was once flush with clams, and may be again someday, but not today.

Among the scattered oyster shells lay a moon snail shell.

Today the sun was as close as it’s going to get until next January rolls in, but not close enough to make much difference in the chill. I wore 4 layers, should have gone with five.

In just a few months, the laughing gulls will be back, stealing from children squealing under a June sun.

But today, I’m the only one on the beach, from Scott Avenue down to the ferry jetty, kept company by the few birds facing into the stiff breeze.

January 2, 2020January 8, 2022

New Year’s Day in NCM

A couple of year’s ago on New Year’s eve.
Closest thing I come to resolutions these days.

I watched the sun as it set yesterday.
I watched the sun as it rose again this morning.

I don’t do this often enough, few of us do.

Just a few minutes after the sun broke through this morning, a twitchy squirrel sat on top of a fence post, still, facing the sun, then resumed his twitchiness.

A vulture flew within 20 feet of me, its under feathers reflecting the sunlight as it banked.

I just watched.
It would have happened anyway.
And it’s happening anyway.

And it will keep on happening….