Anticipation

I'm so lucky that v reads the paper.  He informed me that some of the highest tides of the year are happening this week; yesterday, today, and tomorrow morning.  We'll be heading out bright and early to see what we can catch.  

I have to admit that I have a personal preference for really low tides.  Oh sure, high tides are dramatic, crashing waves and all that, but low tides are revealing.  The tide  being sucked out to sea, its watery fingers  slipping their hold from rocks, sand, and sea grass.  It's the best time to go tide pooling and seeing the most diversity of the near rocky  shore marine life.  The sandy beaches are vast and reflective.

Piles of giant kelp lie in great clumps along the shoreline. The winter storms have ripped them from their anchoring holdfasts.  Low tide holds the beach in anticipation. Marine life holds its breath while alien life forms comb the rarely exposed portions of sand and rocky crevices.  Anemones, Barnacles, limpets, and muscles have all closed themselves tightly to wait out this exposure.  Can you imagine living in an environment where you may be, periodically, pulled under water for minutes or over an hour, holding your breath while waiting to breath the air again?  Unfathomable.

In bocca al lupo. m & v