Tuesday Morning Island Report

View of Middle and West Anacapa from East Anacapa Island and, in the distance, Santa Cruz Island

It was actually yesterday that I went to Anacapa Island. As a part of my continuing training to be a Channel Islands volunteer naturalist, I observed what leading a hike there entails. (Observed is not quite the right word since I still had to climb the 157 steps from the boat to get there.)

Some of the steps....

Just in case you're already making your Mother's Day plans for next year, a trip to Anacapa is an inspired choice. At this time of year, western gulls are nesting there and you can experience an apt description of motherhood. Depending on your particular take, you'll hear the gulls describe their experience pretty much non-stop by calling out OW! or WOW! every time you come close to a nest which is what happens with every step.

Gull describing motherhood (of course it could be a male since they look alike)

Mother's Day bouquet (Giant coreopsis, endemic to the Channel Islands)

Fancy nest with a little shade

Every white speck in this photo is a gull

Gulls eggs

Typically there are three eggs in a nest. Why three? Maybe because the fledgling survival rate for gulls on Anacapa is 40%. Maybe because when the Chumash people were stoping over there back when they traveling the islands, it was so they could harvest one egg from each nest without putting the gull population at risk. Yesterday my mentor said that if a nest has fewer than two eggs, a gull will often replace the missing egg with a rock.

In the next few weeks the island will be hopping with tiny puffball hatchlings and the gulls will be even more raucous as they protect their chicks.

Saturday Beach Report and Big News!

It's hard to say which was more beautiful today--morning or evening.

As for me, I'm now a certified Channel Islands National Park/Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary volunteer naturalist. I've loved this place since the minute I moved here six years ago, and now I get to talk about it on whale watch cruises and at community events. Eventually, I hope to get certified to lead hikes on the islands. And I hope that the islands will find their way into my writing.

Beach Report: Yesterday and Today

According to the Washington Post and other sources, the Innuit language has at least 50 words for snow. There ought to be that many words to describe the grays, blues, greens, and silvers that color the ocean. Probably we need a dozen words for pink and lavender too. Maybe a few words for gold while we're at it. It never looks the same to me.

And there's the human component. People can't help making things.

Pygmy mammoths contemplating a return to the Channel Islands

Pygmy mammoths are a real thing--in case you don't already know. 

"In 1994, paleontologists made the remarkable discovery of a pygmy mammoth on Santa Rosa Island, the most complete collection of its kind in the world. Found only on the California Channel Islandsand nowhere else in the world, the pygmy mammothwas probably a small form of the Columbian mammothfound on the mainland."

And sometimes nature imitates nature.

Driftwood sealions frolic on the sand

The Beach Report

Two of the  Channel Islands, Annacapa and Santa Cruz, have blown onto the sand at Hollywood Beach. Currently, the two wind tossed islands are now buried in the sand near the beach bathrooms which completely disappeared from view around sunset Saturday evening. The bathrooms are now able to be accessed, thanks to the quick work of Harbor Patrol, by a ladder that descends through the roof. Beachgoers are advised to use caution.

Pedestrians in the beach and marina areas are now fashioning helmets out of the stem portion of downed palm fronds in a fight fire with fire mentality. A recently interviewed walker reported that he'd been struck by 17 falling fronds in the last 24 hours, but that his "helmet" had done a good job at protecting him.

Fish have also been seen to be flying through the air in the marina and at the beach. The herons in the area which have begun to speak a rudimentary English have expressed their appreciation at the bonus.

As for me, I'm tired of the wind. It's keeping me awake at night. I haven't slept much in 3 or 4 days and have reason to believe I may be suffering from hallucinations. I'm hoping that explains why I'm heading back to divorce mediation due to the reduced compensation of the Best Ex-Husband-In-the World. (Yes, that is how I have actually referred to him this past year. Really. I swear.)

Stay tuned. And just for the sake of idle speculation, do you think I'd make more money doing Air BnB or selling divorcée tee shirts on my blog, dispensing my wealth of divorce wisdom?

Stay out of the wind. I've heard it can cause temporary insanity.

Wednesday Morning Beach Report

Back to blue. The wind has settled.
You could make bigger waves in your bathtub.
All day I thought what a perfect day to be out on a boat.
Still no response to my application to be a volunteer docent for the Channel Islands National Park.

Once upon a time I had a husband and young children.
We took a vacation to Cornwall and there was a church buried in the sand.
In this time before my beach life, I wondered how this could happen. Who/What/How would a church become buried in the sand?
This is not a church. It's a bathroom.
I understand now.
How the wind moves the sand and we get tired of putting it back.

The tide was out when I walked on the beach today. I could walk/swim a little to the breakwater, I thought. I love my impulsive urges and I'm glad that I act on fewer of them.

When I got home, the marina looked like a bathtub that someone had pulled the plug on. How deep is it, I wondered. What if someday, I looked out my window and saw the boats sitting on the ground?

I still pick up heart-shaped rocks and beach glass. The hearts are so numerous now they are stacked two and three deep. There is a tower of hearts in the center. . And today I found an orange piece of beach glass. Not amber. Orange. Orange is my favorite color.

Beach glass. Heart rocks. I find them lying at my feet. How lucky is that?

Friday Evening Beach Report: How a walk on the beach is like a lifeboat

 I am stuck. No not literally. Not in the mud. Just the mud inside my head. Still no word from the state of Iowa that my mom has made it onto Medicaid. It's Friday. Why didn't I call the caseworker? I don't know. Because I'm stuck in the mud inside my head.

Meanwhile my mom's dentures somehow got lost at the nursing home. This might be day three of toothlessness. Everyone is looking for them. No one has found them. Lost teeth were a pretty regular occurrence when my mom lived here with me. I'd find them under the bed or in the bed. Once my mom tried to retrieve them from under the bed herself and fell and hit her head. I think that was the time she ended up with a big lump on her forehead that made her look like a Klingon. One day I came home to find her and her caregiver looking sheepish. My mom had dropped her teeth in the sink and a piece broke off and was stuck in the drain. I didn't know whether to call the plumber or the dentist first. It turned out not to be a huge deal. The dentures were fixable and the piece of pink plastic was not big enough to obstruct the plumbing. I was able to do something. Now I'm just able to fret and think of all the reasons why one should not lose one's dentures.

I'm great at menial tasks while fretting. So I fretted and did menial tasks. Christmas lights, cutting up the giant cardboard box that the new ping-pong table came in. Pitching another thing or two into the Goodwill bag.Trying to decide if I should plan a visit to see my my mom soon. Deciding no. Deciding yes. Deciding no. Deciding yes. Getting frustrated for being indecisive.  I couldn't decide whether or not to take a walk either. But I finally did.

The sky looked like cotton batting

And the sand was a mirror for the sky.
Foam was dolloped on the sand like whipped cream.
And if I turned around, I could see the tops of the mountains were white too.

I walked for over an hour until the sky turned red over Santa Cruz Island. I finally got unstuck enough to text daughter C and ask if she wanted to go see her G-ma with me. 

The sunset went crazy and I went sane.

And I've gone through an entire day only being vaguely conscious of my injured ribs. I think I'll try to get back to yoga next week. Another way to be sane.

I came home and bought a plane ticket. I got out the checkbook so I can pay another million dollar bill for the nursing home. I resolved for the billionth time to floss every night so I'll never have dentures. 

It was a perfect day.

Beach Report

Waves crashing over the breakwater at Channel Islands Harbor yesterday

The waves have been immense the last couple of days, the tide so high that yesterday trucks came and pulled the lifeguard stations back from the water several feet. Today there were pools of water as far back as the dunes as a result of the high tides.

Willets and snowy plovers must have felt like they had swank resorts with their own private islands.  I can hear the waves crashing from my driveway which is just over a mile away from the beach. At the risk of redundancy, I'll say again that I love this place. It is paradise.

This picture does not do justice to the enormity of the waves

I don't always know what to do these days without my mother here. I'm greatly relieved that she's in Iowa, yet I'm uneasy sometimes that she's so far away. While making phone inquiries as to the cost of transporting someone's remains to a university deeded body program, it could be helpful to look across the room and see that person eating cookies and yogurt.

I would like to say that I've been able to turn my attention to writing. Instead I find myself googling things like "how to help a Syrian family," "interfaith organizations," "how to support religious freedom." Like the ocean, the world is in an uproar. Like most people I don't really know what to do about it personally. What are you doing, dear reader?

Most likely my volunteer gig after the first of the year will involve sea lions or the Channel Islands. But what I should probably be doing is sitting in the hallway at a social services office in Iowa, weeping and gnashing my teeth until I get my mom on Medicaid--and perhaps while ensconced there, stepping up on a soapbox to rail against Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. The bill for the third month of nursing home care has arrived and I've made my third attempt at bureaucratic hoop jumping. Sometimes I think I have too much faith in everything.

I've been wondering too if my life will soon feel settled. The last seven years have held a lot of turmoil. Divorce, death, and drama have been recurring themes here in Margaritaville. I do believe the winds of change are blowing. I have faith in that. Really I do.

Not really feeling festive just yet, but here's a Christmas wreath

Monday Morning Beach Report

Trinity of boats.
One island gone missing while the other holds
holy vigil for its safe return.
A single willet screams in the surf
and an emaciated mermaid breathes her last,
her ruined jewelry next to her on the sand.

Happy as a Seagull Sitting on a Trash Can

That's how I felt today....

when this view greeted me:

The sight of Anacapa and Santa Cruz both visible from end to end. And yes, the sky and the water really were that blue.

I still feel immensely relieved that I'm alive. When I sat in front of Dan's Day of the Dead altar for a bit last night, I told him I'd almost come to see him.  "Hmmm," he said. "Dear sweet girl." 

This afternoon after my mom and I had voted, we nearly got caught in a road rage confrontation. I thought of The Appointment in Samara, a story I first heard from Dan. I've also been thinking about another real life story he told me about a friend or a friend of a friend who had been going through a terrible divorce and a fortune teller or a palm reader told her that on such and such a date there would be an event that would change everything. She construed it to mean her ex would die. Instead, she died. 

I frequently think about my mother's death. When. How. Yesterday, I thought, well, hahahaha I guess that's not how things are going to happen. We're going to go together.

On a happier note, I used to tell Dan I was not the person he would really want with him in an emergency. (Happier is a relative concept, okay?) I sited my deranged mumblings in the ambulance when C had an accident, and she told the paramedics that they needed to take my blood pressure because I'd given out my cellphone number as her father's contact number and I'd given them our old home address instead of our current one.  Or maybe it was birth dates I'd mixed up. I was so out of it, I really don't recall."You don't know that story about yourself is still relevant," Dan told me. And indeed, I don't think I'm that person anymore. 

What old skins have you shed, dear readers?

And, oh, p.s. I AM as happy as a seagull on a trash can despite all these musings about death.

Report from Pillville: The orthotics, the fall-detector button, mental decline, and lingerie?

My mother's feet have killed her most of her life. "It's because we grew up wearing other people's shoes," she says over and over again. "You'd have bad feet too, if all your shoes came from a church rummage sale." Then of course there's the fact that for years she had jobs that kept her on her feet all day while she was wearing those shoes that didn't fit properly--and she walked to and from work--or at least to the bus.

When I was a kid, buying shoes was kind of like going to the doctor or the dentist. We went to THE shoe store where we had our feet measured (both length and width) and a professional shoe salesman came out with the appropriate styles that would fit our particular feet. It was such a big deal that I remember that the names of the salesmen to which my mother entrusted the process.

I'm trying to return the favor here in Pillville, but the first foot doctor was, I'm certain, the brother of the dentist in Little Shop of Horrors. We're on the third podiatrist now, and my mom hates the way she trims her nails--though it is not with power tools. As for the orthotics, well, they might make nice trivets, I suppose.

The fall-detector button is swell, so it seems. The range of the base unit is pretty amazing, and my mom is willing to wear the thing. The form that I must send in to the lifeline folks is a testament to our lack of support network. There are half-a-dozen spaces to write the names of relatives, friends, and neighbors who are within 15 minutes of our house. I suppose I could write my name in all of them.

I'm really trying to open my eyes to things that could cause a fall, and tomorrow a heater will be installed in the ceiling of my mom's bathroom ceiling right next to the shower. She's been dragging one of those little oil filled plug-in radiators back and forth between her bathroom and bedroom, despite the fact that I've offered to do it almost every time. To which she answers, "No, I don't need it." Then she moves it.

This morning we spent hours going 'round and 'round over a bank statement and a credit card. Numbers do not make a whole lot of sense to her anymore, though through some burst of fortitude or a moment of clarity, she managed to get on the phone to one of her favorite mail-order catalogues last week and order 7 sets of matching bras and panties in every color of the rainbow. Given my love for nice lingerie, I'm hoping that's a genetic skill that I'll be able to count on when I'm 89.

All-in-all, Pillville is without a crisis right now. But my mom is sleeping more and is less active. Her hearing is worse; her grip--both literally and figuratively--is weakening; and names for almost everyone have skated off into the polar vortex. She still loves to eat though and is maintaining her weight. And she still has that martini almost every night.

As for the other ancient resident of Pillville, Piper the cat, we're doing our best to keep a bit of CatSure in both of her bowls--the one next to her bed in the laundry room and the one on the coffee table (I know.)  She feels heavier to me, but it might be wishful thinking. Piper got a catalogue of her own in the mail today. Maybe she'll order a new collars in an array of colors.

As for me, my favorite catalogue looks like this:

And yet, here I am in paradise.

january afternoon view to Anacapa and SantaCruz islands

Saturday Morning Beach Report

Corduroy sand. Water rubbed to a rough sheen.
Islands like knives against the sky.
On some especially dark nights they creep closer, unable to
dull their longing for the continent that birthed them eons ago.
And the waves, having eavesdropped on what the yoga teacher said, pause in that moment between in-breath and out-breath, between out-breath and in-breath,
relishing the stillness.
Knowing that is when the mind is clearest.

The State of the State in Margaritaville

Ocean a flat blue sheet stretching all the way to the islands while
Waves wait their turn, each one  building into slow a curl.
Surfers ride, laughing like children.

Pelican Rescue

I found a pelican yesterday.

In my 300 and some days of beach walks, I have not once--until yesterday--found a pelican parked on the sand. I approached the bird to see if it would fly. It did not. When I got within three feet or so I backed off and observed for a bit. The pelican was alert. It was looking around and flexing its wings, but the wings seemed asymmetrical. I decided I would try to get in touch with some sort of bird rescue. Given the fact that the only breeding colonies for the California brown pelican in the western United States are just off shore in the Channel Islands, and that the bird only made it off the federal endangered species list in 2009, I figured a 411 call would be pretty straightforward.

Nope.

I decided to call the marine mammal rescue hot line that I put in my phone earlier this summer, thinking they could refer me. The outgoing message from was a weary sounding guy saying that his number was not the correct one for marine mammal rescue. He did however give out the correct number, but that number yielded a very long and detailed outgoing message including a list of every animal that qualified as a marine mammal. Meanwhile the pelican on the sand was still flapping one wing.

I think I tried 411 again, and got another couple numbers. Both were recorded messages. One was up in Santa Barbara. The other was a hummingbird rescue.

I called daughter C. Now living in St Paul, she's spent a lot of time sailing in these parts. Since I do not have a smart phone, she got on the internet for me and gave me a couple more numbers. I was thrilled to hear the voice of a real person, and the young woman on the line was very enthusiastic. "Oh! Can you transport the bird to us?" she asked. For a second I imagined myself hitch hiking, the immense bird tucked under my arm with my jacket thrown over its head in order to help it remain calm. But I came to my senses. These rescuers were in Malibu, I think, and did not travel this far north.

After a bit of pondering, I decided to call Harbor Patrol. A couple of time a day, and every evening about the time I'm ready to go to bed, I see their boat pass by my house. A real live person answered the phone. The guy asked me a few questions. Was their any blood? Was the bird in any visible distress? What were the nearest cross-street? "Okay," he said. "I'll call the bird lady. She'll be by to get the pelican as soon as she can."

I decided that I should hang around. What if a big dog was galloping down the beach off-leash? I'd have to call my mom and explain that I would be home late. I was already 20 minutes behind my usual arrival time for retuning from my morning walk. As I pulled my phone out one more time, I walked a little closer to the pelican...and he lifted off. The pelican flew a few feet and landed back on the sand. I followed, and then the bird took off again and flew away.

But I'm going to find out who this bird lady is and put her number in my phone.

And did you know that the brown pelican is the only pelican that's a plunge diver? It's breathtaking.

My mom and I were spellbound last February when they were diving right outside our windows.

Anacapa and Santa Cruz were both lost behind a veil of fog this morning. My brain felt much the same as I tried to remember what the yoga teacher said. It was something I needed, something I relished when I heard it, but then it was gone. Hidden like those islands, sunk inside me somewhere, and I am mentally stretching out my arms to it, trying to pull it back, this perfect thought that meshed with the gears of my particular now.

Beach glass comes in four basic colors here on the sands of Margaritaville. Clear, amber, blue and green. There are, according to my inventory, two shades of amber, perhaps three or four distinct types of green, and two vastly different colors of blue--cobalt and aquamarine. Yesterday, for the first time in my 15 months of collecting, I found a piece of red beach glass. Today I found two more. Like the bit of illusive yogic wisdom, beach glass can shimmer right there at your toes and then be swept back out to sea again.

I berate myself sometimes for the beach glass hunting. Is it some weird compulsion like egg collecting? Unlikely, I suppose, since it's doubtful that I'll wipe out the world's supply of Heineken bottles. But I worry about the recognizable gleam in the eyes of other beach glass fanciers if we happen to lift our eyes from the sand long enough to speak. I'm sure the heart of the man I spoke to this morning began to beat a little faster when I showed him the two ruby morsels.

All I know is that I can arrive on the sand, heart sometimes still pumping residual dread even after yoga or t'ai chi chih, and after my fingers trace the sanded curves of what was once sharp and dangerous, I feel smoother too. I bring my pocket full of jewels home and rinse them in the laundry room sink, then lay them on the kitchen counter so my mother can see them. Each time she's amazed, and some mornings we hover over them, marveling like two old dragons, proud of the treasure amassing in our lair.

Only the wildlife at the shore can easily pull my fickle eyes from the treasures on the sand. Pod of whales, school of dolphins, flock of pelicans, or willets, or curlews, or other birds--and I am at the mercy of the intangible connection I feel to the creatures who inhabit the place I love best.

There were birds this morning flying from north to south, barely visible at the smeared line where foggy sky met foggy sea. Almost like floaters in a damaged eye, they felt both real and like a hallucination, these birds who must have numbered in the tens of thousands, moving across the parchment of the horizon like an infinite calligraphy. So many birds that I stood watching, awestruck--almost frightened--at their numbers. Too far away to i.d., they kept coming. I walked for an hour shifting my eyes from the sand to the the horizon, and always when I looked up, the line of birds was there, winging onward as if they knew something I didn't. Something I should flee or fly towards, something I can almost see, but not quite.

Saturday Morning on an Empty Lifeguard Tower, Saving No One

Moon a torn erasure, islands a lilac smudge. Waves into green, towering up from blue. Surfers as black and as plentiful as crows. But certainly not a "murder." What then? A crash, a foam, a swell? All the while a couple stands on the sand, he behind her with their backs to the sun as if they want to make their shadows one.

As I walk home, more surfers run toward the beach. Carpe, I think. If only I knew the Latin for wave.

photo credit: vcstar.com

Hey, Ocean, Who Are You--and What have you done with the ocean I saw yesterday?

When I moved to my new place just a mile from the ocean, I never imagined how much the beach I visit each morning can change in the course of day. There's a slope down to the water...until there's not. The sand is like brown sugar...until it changes to pebbles. One day there are dozens of softball size rocks on the sand, and another there are rocks, wafer thin, perfect for stacking into mini-cairns. Yet another day brings dozens of fist-sized crabs. A couple of days, it's been a pinniped funeral parlor--I believe the top body count was five or six on the stretch that I walk. The birds seem to rotate in and out, too. Crows picking through the sea weed, squadrons of pelicans dive-bombing the waves, seagulls nestled into the sand gathered for what seems to be some kind of seagull sit-in. Some days there are sandpipers, and then sandpipers are nowhere to be seen for weeks. There are days when the islands are invisible. Days when the three parts of Anacapa lie distinctly separate on the horizon. Days when the curve of the coast toward Ventura has vanished. Water: blue, green, gray, silver, sparkling, or dull as mud. Waves mighty enough to bring out the surfers, then nothing but a gentle lapping.

This morning I was surprised to see that the once seemingly distant life guard tower was a mere twenty paces from the surf. The beach was broad and flat, pounded firm. Channels had been sharply carved in the packed sand creating impromptu tide pools. Snowy Plovers raced in and out of the foamy margins where the water met the sand while surfers rode the waves.



I was my usual amazed self.

Of Birds and Girls and Mother Nature

The abandoned swallows nests were pulled down today. Bug spray was applied to neutralize any bird mites. Measurements were take for a "bird slide" in order to discourage a new colony from nesting next spring. As much as I love birds, the constant rain of bird droppings was a bit much. Not to mention the unmelodic chirp of swallows outside my bedroom window. Meanwhile, "Marina" the pigeon (so named by the granddaughter) sits on her nest on my balcony. We're waiting for baby birds. This is not a great photo, but if you look in the shadows, you'll see the nest.

Our outing today included a thorough exploration of the shops in Ventura Harbor Village, and a stop at the Channel Islands National Park visitor center. We watched a 20-minute movie about the place and looked at the exhibits. I feel a bit faint when I realize how close I live to all that beauty.
And of course, there was the beach.

The granddaughter had a rather bizarre bathing suit malfunction. After returning home, she discovered that a good 1/2 to 3/4 of a cup of sand filtered its way through the lining of her suit and is now lodged between the swimming suit lining and the suit itself. I raised two beach loving daughters, and don't recall running across a suit like this one. Yes, some girls' and women's suits do have the weird little not fully sewn down crotch lining that can fill up with sand like a pocket, but in this suit the lining is a full lining and it's completely attached from the top to the bottom of the suit. It's just not impermeable. The only way to release the sand will be to snip the lining out. Clothes. So many of them are more trouble than they're worth.

The conversation today mostly revolved around sea creatures. My favorite part of the day was the silent time I spent watching the girl play. She's 10. She has a brother and a sister, but she lost herself in herself--in her imagination and the "work" of her play. It's a lovely thing how serious children are about playing. How totally they concentrate on it and don't need direction.

Do Not Change the Channel

Like many children, my grandchildren have been raised on TV and videos. Staring at a screen first thing in the morning, last thing at night, and plenty of time in between. I don't hanker for the chirp and drone of the TV in the background as company, and during visits from my son and his family, I would often turn the TV off when I found that no one was really watching it anyway. This visit things were different. I have no TV here at my new house. Yes, they came with their various small screens, but I think the ocean proved to be more mesmerizing. "Can we go back to the beach?" was the refrain of the past few days, and we grown-ups obliged.

We even took a boat ride to Anacapa, one of the The Channel Islands. A large sea lion lounged on the edge of a boat dock setting up the expectation for wildlife even before we left the harbor. Thirty minutes or so out into the ocean, the dolphins arrived. Dozens of them in the distance at first, and then scores mores, rocketing closer and closer until they were almost close enough to touch, racing along side of the boat or leaping out of the water. A couple of seals popped their heads up, too, and there were more sea lions than we could count on the rocks near Anacapa. Sea gulls hovered above, and squadrons of pelicans were so numerous they became practically became mundane.

I tried to mitigate the media's influence with my daughters, allowing only an occasional video or TV show when they were little and, starting with kindergarten they went to Waldorf School where TV, movies, videos, computers and electronic games of all kinds were discouraged altogether. I felt like I was only partially successful when I was in the thick of it all, and would have probably caved far more often if it weren't for the support of our Waldorf school community. It's so clear to me now that nature is the only real competitor for the pull of the media. And kids want to do things. Sitting means flipping a switch and waiting to be entertained. Being out in a boat on the water, chasing the waves, digging in the sand, playing outdoors, walking the dog, doing chores--there's a satisfaction to all of those things that doesn't seem to crave passiveness.

The flat blue water we were lucky to sail on yesterday was almost like a screen. And real live animals popped right out of it.  I love you, Mother Nature.