About 15 miles north of town is Clam Beach. I’ve never gone clamming there, but I’ve walked it for miles, and we did it again.
Standing on the beach and looking east, you see a backdrop of thickly shrubbed and treed bluffs rising up on the other side of the highway. The thick vegetation helps to stabilize these bluffs, and protect them from the rain and ocean winds – a boon to houses sitting on top, on the edge, and just barely visible through the trees. The highway was cut through the dunes that sit as foothills to the bluffs, and it can’t be seen from here through the grassy sand hummocks on the beach side of the road. Little River flows alongside the dunes on its way to its mouth on down the beach a ways. A very little river, more like a creek.
Little River, the Dunes and the Bluffs
The beach itself is broad and sandy. We’re here at low tide, and follow along Little River, crossing the beach to the ocean at the river mouth to avoid the hot, hot sand on our bare feet. Even after numbing them in the cold ocean water, when we’re on our way back to the parking lot, it’s only enough to take us half way, and we run back to the water and walk all the way around again.
Across the Burning Sands
The Mouth of Little River
Many years ago, a friend and I watched a huge flock of small shore birds swooping and diving, zigging and zagging in 45 degree angled turns, dancing up and down the beach as these birds do – the entire flock moving as if thinking with a single brain. They raced away down the beach and then started back straight toward us, and just as we were ready to tuck and duck, they all flipped up and back so that the sun caught their white bellies with a thousand points of light. One of those small breathtaking moments that imprints forever on the back of your mind.
Today there are the usual seagulls and a couple of raptors up cruising the thermals. Two people on horseback are just starting out from the parking lot, and pass by the sheriff’s beach patrol vehicle coming back in. There are two large rutted circles cut into the wet sand by someone’s 4-wheel drive vehicle, but there is usually very, very little vehicle traffic on the beaches. Occasionally someone stupid will get stuck out here. Dune buggies are limited to their own small section of beach elsewhere.
Today there are the usual seagulls and a couple of raptors up cruising the thermals. Two people on horseback are just starting out from the parking lot, and pass by the sheriff’s beach patrol vehicle coming back in. There are two large rutted circles cut into the wet sand by someone’s 4-wheel drive vehicle, but there is usually very, very little vehicle traffic on the beaches. Occasionally someone stupid will get stuck out here. Dune buggies are limited to their own small section of beach elsewhere.
Beach Traffic
Sand Circles
Lots of good ions in the ocean air. Breathe deep, let the wind blow your hair, curl your toes around the sand. Life is good. You can almost imagine there is nothing wrong with the world.
Where the Water Meets the Sky
