One day last summer, a few coworkers and I drove out to Fire Island to film a documentary. It’s a narrow barrier island roughly 60 miles from New York City, bordered on one side by the dashing Atlantic and on the other by a much-less-roaring bay. I was there to report on how a booming deer population, increasing erosion, and the rising water table were eating away at a storied maritime forest, tucked up away from the ocean behind a series of dunes. We spent all day there, in the part of the island known as the Sunken Forest, wandering the gnarled trunks and rolling sassafras leaves between our fingers until the air smelled like Fruit Loops. From a winding boardwalk, we gazed down into pools of standing water, rotting the trees from the roots up; we pulled on Tyvek suits and rain boots, ringed with duct tape to trap any clambering ticks, and ranged deeper into the woods to survey young branches stripped bare by hungry deer that were devastating the new growth faster than it could recover. The trees muffled the sound of the waves; I completely forgot we were so close to the ocean.
When filming was pretty much wrapped, the park biologist asked if we wanted to go down to the water. Of course we did; it seemed silly not to at least take a look. We left the forest, squinting as our eyes adjusted to the light.
The tide was out, exposing a wide expanse of sand. We walked beside the thundering water, hugging the part of the shore that was littered with debris—the tangled clusters of seaweed, the beak-broken shells. As I stooped, again and again, to prod the things that the waves had brought us, the biologist gave me a quick overview of the anatomy of the beach. We were picking though the marine debris, sometimes called tidewrack, the assortment of synthetic and natural stuff that tumbles to shore with the water. He pointed to the crusty, salty line on the sand at the farthest reach of the debris. That was the limit of the swash zone, he said—the place where the waves spit things out before retreating.
This week’s poems—“The Hermit Crab,” by Mary Oliver, and an excerpt of “Corsons Inlet,” by A. R. Ammons—remind me of that place where the water leaves its luggage.
I knew, of course, that the tide came and went—delivered things and then carried them away again. But it’s easy to think that, unless you’re sliding around the slick rocks of a tidal pool, all the really exciting stuff happens far from shore.
Back when I worked in a museum, I spent some lunch hours visiting J. M. W. Turner’s wild seascapes and imagining the sound, smell, and stomach-roiling rolling of the water far from land. (When the Metropolitan Museum of Art is open again, go check out “Whalers,” below, painted around 1845, and next time you’re in London, stop by the Tate to see the swirling, scary “Snow Storm—Steam Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth,” made a few years prior.) I once read that Turner bound himself to the masts of whaling ships to understand the feeling of the wind lashing his face, and the waves thrashing the gunwale. It’s likely apocryphal, but either way, back in his studio, he painted massive swells that breached the sides of ships, and storm clouds that pooled above the crews like poured mercury. I found it thrilling to study the canvases and then step back and close my eyes, trying to conjure gusts heavy with the scent of brine.
The shoreline wasn’t quite as exciting as all that—which was probably for the best, since I would be puking my guts out over the side of a whaling ship caught in a maelstrom. Whatever the swash zone lacked in obvious drama, though, it made up for in subtler charms. There were unfortunate crustaceans and mollusks, dangerously exposed to the birds that were darting toward them. (At Fire Island, mole crabs live in the swash zone, and ghost crabs burrow nearby.) And those hungry birds bickered, loudly, among themselves. The swash zone held a whole world, with its own residents and its own rules. I pocketed a blue-crab shell, bleached nearly white, and it sits on my desk at work—a reminder that there’s action and excitement everywhere, if you look closely enough.
It’s not a bad memory to dredge up right now. It sometimes feels like there’s not much to see from home—like all the excitement in the natural world is playing out somewhere else, distant and unreachable. I, at least, am shuffling toward the hermit end of the social spectrum, and feeling quite crabby about it all. One line, particular, from the A. R. Ammons poem continues to resonate with me. Lately, like the swash zone itself, I feel “caught always in the event of change.”
Though it’s true that’s been a while since I have spied on birds squabbling over a crustacean, there are still plenty of interesting things to see from this vantage point. I’m using the iNaturalist app a lot these days, to learn about the trees and flowers I see on my occasional walks, and to ask for help identifying the little fingernail-sized snail shells, above, that my dear friend Jessica Glazer collected on a walk in Massachusetts and mailed to me in Brooklyn. (My best guess, so far, is that they’re marsh ramshorns, or Planorbella trivolvis, which spiral to the left.) There are several easy ways to nudge yourself to look a little closer, if you’re so inclined: Many citizen science projects could use your curiosity and eyeballs, and you could also press any bodega flowers you’ve purchased to make a botanical record of life indoors during the era of COVID-19.
Thanks for listening. This week, I’d love to know if you’ve collected any bits of the natural world during quarantine. I’m trying to think of this moment as something like low tide—strange, interesting, and temporary.
Yours,
Jess
P.S. A few nice links:
The bloody Roman Colosseum was once dripping with hundreds of species of plants, and the Public Domain Review recently wrote about the 19th-century Flora of the Colosseum, a careful record of their beauty. If you don’t already follow Governor Cuomo’s daily press briefings, you might consider tuning in for the PowerPoints alone. They are succinct, punchy, and occasionally unhinged; he’s like a gruff uncle, but with some cheesy stock images up his sleeve. The Instagram account @coronacuomo rounds up the choicest screen grabs. Steph Strauss sent me this newish episode of Cheryl Strayed’s podcast, in which she interviews Margaret Atwood. There are many charming moments—the octogenarian climbs out onto her roof to bully squirrels, for instance, and doesn’t think it’s remarkable at all—but the best one involves Atwood bellowing a line from Beowulf from somewhere deep inside her gut. She’s a contemporary Canadian treasure, but maybe ancient and Anglo-Saxon at heart.
Talk to you next week. Good luck out there.