We saw two very old things today on Big Beach: a cross-section of a seven-hundred-year-old red cedar and a ‘mystery shipwreck’ of around 1890, complete with young tree growing through the skeleton. The sea has pushed driftwood logs up against it and under it, and rusted nails rise from it like mushrooms. We stood admiring it, quietly contemplating that we were but the bark on the giant trunk’s perimeter, and had we been on the ship, nothing would have remained of us.
We spent some slow time poking around in the tidal pools – teeming with tiny hermit crabs, small black and white fish, broken shells and aromatic, bulbous seaweed that popped when one stepped on it…one final walk on the breezy Long Beach, where the steps down to it had been washed away during a big storm, and still need to be repaired. The beaches are quiet now with the Victoria Day long weekend already a memory.
On to the graduation ceremony!
