The length of the line

Jan 1, 6:32AM Anna Maria Island
The dawn is pitch black drenched in a gray fog so thick that the shore is not visible from the porchdeck. At the water's edge only the faintest pale embers of house lights can be seen through the mist. It is low tide, the newly dry sand is flat and wide as a highway. Dry is an arbitrary, changing, elastic term. There are places that shine in the darkness, a thin layer of moisture hovers there, more like damp air than damp earth. In other stretches the sand shifts under your sneaks, you slide slightly like a skier finding an edge. The beach smells muddy with a hint of sulfur and things dead.

I can barely see ahead of me. My glasses fog and refog so I take them off and carry them in my right hand. I move away from the shore to where the sand is rippled, edged with great shell fields. I alternate between bumping along through the ripples and crunching through the shells. I don't like crunching shells, I always think about the combers.

They are out here daily, scanning the shore with the same seriousness as the actors on CSI-NY and then there are the kids looking for just the right souvenirs to take home by the jar full. I have a lot more respect for those conch shells I've seen for sale in the beach chair and towel shops. Those shells have a perfect quality about them, no chips or holes or cracks, and they are large, bigger than an open hand or even two open hands. On the beach you only see the little ones with their thin tails broken off, or the ones with crushed ends, internal spirals exposed, the ruins of themselves revealed.

This is the first day of the New Year and I seem to be the first human to arrive on this beach this morning, I run for over thirty minutes before seeing two figures stooped near the shore looking for good shells in the gloom. The fog is extra heavy duty, the kind Hollywood puts in movies like The Usual Suspects. As usual I have too many clothes on and I have soaked through my tee-shirt. When I reach the end of the western beach where a seawall blocks the way I turn to go back and am immediately smacked in the face by a cold southern wind. I am fumbling with my jacket zipper when I see a seabird laying alone on the dunes. It is alert and makes a cry as I come nearer. There is something wrong with it's legs, it cannot stand, but I cannot see for certain what the problem is.


"Probably fishing line." a voice says.

I must have jumped six feet.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to startle you." It is a man, old, but fit looking with the kind of face you would expect to see on a racing yacht. There is a woman with him, dressed in a bluish warm-up suit and a floppy hat. "We'll call the people from the sanctuary, but it's New Year's, who knows if anyone's there."

"Leave it be."the woman said knowing what the man had in mind to do,"It will peck your eyes out as you try to help it out."

Not wanting to get in the middle of a discussion, domestic or otherwise, I nodded a Happy New Year to them both and trotted off towards the day, the last day of our vacation. Not really a day, our flight out was at eleven fifteen. There was packing to do. We had arrived a week and a half ago, the ruins of ourselves revealed. Several spectacular sunsets later, with scattered naps on the beach, deeply semi-sweet audiobooks and luscious, sauce-glazed meals with our dearest friends, we are revived.

Now I had just three miles to go to get back to the condo, then thirty miles to the airport, then the non-stop back to the icy winds of New York.



I've been back for a couple of days now and my mind is still tied to that fishing line.