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July 2, 1999 |
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large dark roast , black with extra sand |
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July 2, 1999 1 American goldfinch Plover Count: 18 adults, 2 chicks (so the white board says) Today's Starting Pitcher: Pedro Martinez Today's Reading: none
Copyright © 1999, Janet I. Egan |
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Sand in my shoes. Sand in my pockets. Sand in my hair. Sand in my ears! The wind blew out of the southwest for the entire 4-hour shift, sometimes with such force that the blowing sand stung my exposed skin worse than a greenhead bite. Pretending it was some kind of spa treatment for exfoliating the skin only goes so far. I stopped at Fowle's on the way to the refuge 'cause I hadn't had any coffee yet and didn't want the headache I'd woken up with to get any worse. They know me there now. At least the woman who sold me my large dark roast black does. I wasn't thinking clearly, because since yesterday part of the beach has reopened meaning the closed area boundaries have moved. So instead of the relatively short walk on a hard packed sand/gravel road to my station, I had a longer walk on a soft sand off-road vehicle access road over a dune. This is close to unmanageable with a folding chair in one hand and a hot cup of coffee in the other. I began to wish I'd learned how to juggle as I tried not to drop the coffee or the chair and not to burn my hand. I flushed a goldfinch and a sparrow of some kind along the way but I wasn't about to put down the coffee and chair and get the binoculars out of my backpack to examine the sparrow. It's a miracle I made it to the beach without spilling a drop. I had to weight the chair down with my backpack to keep it from blowing away while I applied bug repellent - taking care not to get any in the coffee. The wind was blowing hard enough most of the time that I probably didn't need the bug repellent. Green heads are so big and slow that they can't land to bite you in a high wind. But I wasn't taking any chances. Once I'd settled in things were pretty quiet although windy. Terns, both least and common, flew back and forth for hours catching fish and taking it somewhere over the big dune behind me. A flock of Bonaparte's gulls hung around flying back and forth in front of me too. I kept hoping to turn one of them into a common black-headed gull, but after awhile I realized I was looking at the same individuals time after time. I sipped the coffee slowly, savoring the rich fresh-roasted taste. It didn't seem all that strange to be drinking hot coffee in the middle of a heat wave. I put the cup, still about a quarter full, down in the sand, carefully digging out a place for it so it wouldn't fall over while I used both hands to steady the binoculars to check something out further down the beach. The hazy shapes that loomed so large on the horizon were not people but great black-backed gulls. Distance and haze can really fool the eye. I put the binoculars down just as a gust of wind blew the coffee cup right over despite my having anchored it in the sand. The remaining coffee stained the sand dark brown then disappeared. I grabbed for the cup to keep it from blowing away but I missed it and the wind carried it toward the water and northward. I ran after it but the wind blew my uniform hat off and I knew I couldn't let the hat blow into the ocean. By the time I retrieved the hat, the cup was in the water riding northward on the waves. Heck, at least I tried. Few visitors made it down as far as the new boundary. One couple that I'd encountered before asked me if those large dark shapes on the horizon were people trespassing in the closed area. "Nope, they're gulls," I replied, to their disbelief. They had to check it out with binoculars too. Even then I don't think they believed it. The sky to the south was starting to clear a little so the view got less hazy. I still didn't see any piping plovers, but at least I could see the predator exclosures. While I was looking south, I failed to notice the sky to the north turning purplish black. By the time I did notice it, I was packing up at the end of the shift anyway. I had a much easier trek over the dunes without the hot coffee cup in my hand, and made it to the gatehouse to turn in my report and return the radio just as the first raindrops began to fall. By the time I got across the bridge onto the mainland the heavens opened up. The streets were ankle deep in much needed rain and I decided to wait out the heaviest downpours at The Tannery Cafe. A woman who described herself as having come "all the way from north of Boston" asked me how long it had been raining and when it would stop so she could go to the beach. I shook the sand out of my ears, and told her I had no idea. |
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