Finding beauty in the everyday

Some pix and musings from my stretch of shore.

Mussels are such unexciting shells that I never paid them much attention until I saw this. The sunlight had found the beauty and lit it like a small lantern resting on the shore.

For this walk, I'd taken my pincers and a couple of grocery bags. Before I'd gone a quarter mile I'd filled the bags with trash--plastic bottles, screw-on caps, a gazillion straws, cigarette butts, the occasional condom, a baby pacifier, cups, pieces of take-out plates, liquor bottles.

It's a never-ending task to clean a beach. The government trucks use giant rakes on the majority of sand, but there is always trash along the shoreline where it washes up. Sometimes I pick it up.

Sometimes I see the same hippie-guy or a grandmotherly-woman doing the same.

Each piece that doesn't wind up strangling or filling the intestines of a sea mammal or bird makes it worth the effort, even when it keeps on coming.

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On the far south end of the beach I walk is a fenced-section where old-timey sand dunes still exist for nesting endangered California least terns. In this shot, they've left the fenced area to search for food by the water's edge. The photo is not in great focus but it was as close as I could get (with only my phone camera and no zoom) before they took to the air. You can still see how many there are.

When these shy birds burst into the sky, their black-and-white plumage creates an amazing visual of shifting light.

They're too fast for me to get that shot, but here's a haiku:

least terns flee safety

fences--white-and-black cloud of

fluttering petals