Walking Towards December ~ A Beach Walk

Hi everyone! All the leftovers from Thanksgiving should be finished by now and it's time to get out and enjoy the brisk late fall/ early winter beach. Some of these photos were taken earlier in the month, before we had the shocking and anomalous deep freeze last week. Oh and that snow!

Beautiful November colors in the dunes....

Could these green leaves in the center be the velvet leaf weed I am searching for?

All fall we have been watching the dredging boats, working on H Sandy beach repairs, an ongoing somewhat sporadic project done by the US government? and the Army Corps of Engineers.

The boats used are multiple---one very large barge with suction pumps and hoists and who knows what all. This ship siphons up sand from the seabed and sends it through a 12"? diameter tube, a quarter mile long, up onto the beach.Then there are large but a bit smaller boats, plus each has its own tugboat! These smaller boats are in charge of setting the suction tubes and the flotation devices that hold the tube in position. There is also a strange superstructure on the beach, called The Crab, which is a lookout post and a site evaluator, and a surveying tool.

Meanwhile back on land huge equipment came and pounded large pilings into our dunes. It was pretty awful, my house shook like an earthquake for weeks and Mo was scared. The constant rumbling and shaking was oddly upsetting or nerve wracking, even when one knew it was not indeed an earthquake.

Not thrilled with these pilings, they are ugly and much taller than any natural dune formation. They also spoil my view! Will they help collect sand as the years and even eons go by, or will they be expensive eyesores? I don't think anyone really knows. 

So anyway, the sand sucked from the seabed will be moved with, again, giant machines to form faux dunes. The dunes they built a few years ago have settled in nicely, so that may be okay. Will sand be pushed into the piling forests mechanically? We don't know, yet another mystery.

All this background is because....the dredged sand is already yielding up new and interesting beachcombed treasures. The lure of the beach hunt has returned.

Here is a large patch of rare pink sand!

My friend found this  very large, fortunately used, old brass gun shell. A 20 mm round marked USA 1943. You can see how big it is.

Research shows us that this WW2 shell was an anti-aircraft round, from small ''cannons'' used on US warships. More info HERE

How? Why? When, where? It must have quite a story to tell.

Then seaglass has returned, but for now at a rather far away beach near the surfing beach.

My daughter came home one morning with quite a haul.

Some beauties, a cobalt bottle neck:

A green milk glass or Jadeite shard with fluted edges.

The beach is too far for me to walk there and back especially after my recent fall and thrice daily Mo walking duties. If we get a warm gorgeous day I think I'll get a lift over to the surfing beach, then I'll walk one way home, maybe three miles?

Sunsets have been long and so beautiful. Very much ''of Autumn"; not a winter-y sky.

Mo was happy to don his coziest fall plaid jacket that frigid 19* day.

But mostly he'd rather just lie in bed on cold grey days.

I'm excited to welcome December soon. My holidays have evolved since my kids were wildly excited Santa believing toddlers, but every year is wonderful because we are together. New memories, new ideas, new traditions.  (Money not Legos!)

"Simplify"?

Your thoughts?

love

lizzy 

gone to the beach...

A more technical description, with wonderful photos!,of a similar ongoing operation, from this past summer HERE  The main difference is here they are adding to the dune structure, filling areas that they believe are flood channels [ooops, no, guys, maybe NOT! Here is the flood break, about 50 feet east of the piling installation, sigh]

and in the other project they are widening the beach. If they widen MY beach I am going to buy a golf cart, my beach is huge in recent years.

The Calm

A new week, a new month, happy Monday! The phrase calm before the storm is oh so accurate here at the beach. The photos for our walk today were taken on a beautiful day right before this weekend's nor'easter arrived. Doesn't the photo below have a hint of summer? Wishful thinking maybe.

I am working on extending my walking distances, with the notion that maybe I can go to the flea this spring. [It maybe began yesterday, but it was very windy; I never even thought about going.]
Here are some walks with Mo:

And here is my walk to the beach the other day:

By mid-winter the beach is very monochrome--tan with a hint of beige.

Not a bird or a creature to be seen. Did they move inland to be safe from the storm? Or simply spooked by the giant noisy scary trucks?

Here are the deep ruts the huge machines create. Can you imagine being a tiny newborn plover chick, no bigger than a golf ball, trying to get to the water's edge. These deep furrows are mountains to them. They feed on tiny organisms on the tideline, within a day of hatching. Unlike some birds, plovers are not fed by their parents, though the mama plover carefully supervises their infant adventures.

Not to mention the erosion causing damage to the vulnerable winter beach.

Let's walk on....

Before the nor'easter, the previous Saturday, we had yet another big windstorm that got no publicity. The aftermath of high winds is the uncovering of beach treasure!

A large driftwood piece,  silvery smooth from years in the ocean.

Another log---are these woodpecker holes? Did this tree once shelter a nest in a faraway forest?

I found a few bits and pieces to carry home.

Pebbles, a big rusty nail. One smoothly rounded bit of brown amber beach glass. A strange disk.

What could this rusty piece be?

It is made of layers and has the tiny knobs distinctive of laminated coins. There is a layer of green oxidation, a thin leaf of copper once. Is it a coin? 

If it is a coin, it is very large! "Pieces of eight"/ ''doubloons'' thrill my beachcomber heart. Maybe it's an ancient silver dollar--though  not as ancient as this comparison coin from my stash. In 1890 silver dollars were just that, solid silver.

\

I used a thin knife to separate the layers. The ''coin'' came apart like a downy-flake biscuit!

It's fun to imagine, however unlikely. "I always called them diamonds, though I knew they were only stones," as the old song goes.

I can't wait to see if the big storm brought me more treasures!

Here is Mo, alert and worried during the big storm.

then snuggled safe from the wind, with his best dolly.

He looks up, runs to doors and windows, trying to alert me to the intruding thing. Then he hides in my bed, exhausted.

love

lizzy 

gone to the beach...

PS this is Sunday night, as the storm was fading. Huge waves still, even today.

Imagine being out there on a ship, in the frigid black Atlantic.