At the beach, some blithe sunshine

I went to the beach, and I had this thought:

It was the first time in a long time I was able to enjoy the view without thinking about what the hell was wrong with what I was seeing.

I don't know that much about the beach, environmentally.

Everytime I go, I learn more. We tend to hang out at the state parks, the national park beaches... the places where there might be a nature center, a touch tank, and a lot of sand dunes. (Also, mosquitoes, but oh well.)

Anyhow. This time around, I learned a heck of a lot about one of our favorite animals, the horseshoe crab. I learned, for example, that those crazy looking helmet-like creatures actually molt their shells like all other crabs. So all those times I found empty shells and thought the animal had died, I realize now I was just seeing the molted shell.

Also, I learned that loggerhead turtles like to eat the horseshoe crabs. Crunch, crunch.

What else? I learned that my daughter is really good at feeding them. It was fun to watch her take pieces of clam from a park naturalist, and then feed them to the crab, who used its claws to move the food to the center of its abdomen, where its mouth was located. And later when one washed up on the beach and a grown woman near by freaked out, it was great to watch my kids roll their eyes and know that they'd be the first ones to try to pick the thing up and put it back in the water. Horseshoe crabs don't sting anyway, said my son. That's not a stinger, it helps them swim better. He'd been listening while that naturalist was talking.

But while I was learning these and a million other things, I realized I was more relaxed than I had been in a long time. Maybe, I thought, it was the lack of knowledge. The beach is not where I am planted, it is only a place I love and visit sometimes. The not knowing... that is a luxury. I can look out the window at the plants as we drive by and not think about how many of them are invasive exotics. Or how many of the trees have beetle infestations.

Not that I think everything is great at the beach, environmentally speaking. And not that I think it is okay to go about blithely ignoring the problems.

I know that we are over fishing. We are eating the tigers of the sea, too high on the food chain. Things in the ocean are not happy. The water quality is bad, the erosion problems, worse.

But for a while, I can also enjoy the sunshine without knowing too much about what is actually there. I don't know the the details well enough to be thinking about it all the time. I can just enjoy being. Just being.

As a biologist friend of mine says, hiking at home has become one long thought about what is wrong in the woods. It is tiring.

I felt guilty in a way, thinking this at the beach. But I needed it. I came home and exulted at the ironweed, which went into full purple bloom in my garden during my absence. I came home recharged, ready to get out there and do more work. I came home and thought about where I am planted, and ready once again to help make it better. I came home and found butterflies, weeds, and berries forming on the bushes.

Today, I was thinking back to my beach vacation and I wondered if it was a bit like taking a vacation to a country where you don't speak the language. You remember to be polite, you try to be respectful, but when a fight breaks out between to strangers on the bus you don't know what they are arguing about so you can go on reading your paper in peace.