Land and water, December 30th

I walked down to the beach at Salt Pond yesterday. I observed changes in the landscape due to the winter storm last week. The first, and most obvious, was this huge root mass, taller than me, at the edge of the last driveway on Salt Pond Road. I was surprised how shallow the roots grow. There are clusters of vigorous roots at the edges, extending their territory, but no match for the fierce winds.

Unless there’s a car there, I trespass through the yard of the last house on that road to reach the beach. No one is there in the winter, and most of the summer too. If I ever meet the people, I’ll ask their permission – they gave it to my friends who live near there. The lawn showed signs of the surf having been up that high. Some of the grass was combed in a consistent direction. Rocks were scattered in the grass. And there was a tide line of sticks, seaweed, and debris. Hard to imagine the sea being up that high. I would have liked to observe it, but there’s no way I was going out in that weather.

The beach seemed subtly changed. The gravel barrier between the sea and the pond was heaped higher. The channel looked different. There were new piles of seaweed. The remnants of a fire someone built on the edge of the beach were gone. The photo is a panorama that distorts the way it looks, but captures the feeling very well.