Beach Life: Heroic Dogs, Bird Legs, Lavender Skies, Leaping Dolphins, and Seaweed Trees

Heroic Dogs

This morning I was walking on the bluffs above the beach and saw two barechested, tan, chiseled, handsome men standing with a dog, looking out over the ocean and talking softly.

They caught my attention.

As I got closer, though, what really got my attention was the dog.  It was a medium-build, short-hair, grayish brown, muscular, nondescript dogs’ dog--and it was covered with scars.   Large patches of fur were shaved off with long lines of black stitches.  Lots of them.  One on the dog’s right side.  One on the left shoulder, one down the thigh.  And there was a white bandage sliding down the back left ankle.  This dog looked seriously beat up.  Could they have been fighting this dog?  The men looked so nice and kind in their faces and eyes. 

I asked nonchalantly, “What happened to your dog?”

“He saved my girlfriend from a pack of coyotes.”

“Wow, he’s a hero.”

“Yes, he’s a good dog.  He’s had a rough couple of days, but he’s alright now.”

“That’s good.”

The dog turned to face the men.  I looked at the men in the eyes and touched the dog softly on the rump, scrambled down the path to the railroad track, looked back up at them, and moved on down to the beach. 

Bird Legs

When I was a kid, we made fun of girls with skinny legs by calling them “bird legs.”  And if a girl didn’t eat much, we said she “ate like a bird.” 

Having observed a lot of beach birds lately, I’d have to say these were inadvertent compliments, or at least not accurate descriptions. 

First of all, bird legs are cool!  They are so sturdy and delicate all at once.  Often longer than the bird is (no matter how you measure it), they hold up the whole bird’s body weight and quickly propel the bird skittering along the sand like air.  The birds flow along the line of the sand and water, running into and out of waves like little kids.

And, second of all, the way birds eat is determined.  Nothing deters them.  They run along on their long, skinny, tough, mobile legs, and poke their long, skinny curved bills or short beaks or whatever they have for a nose/mouth combo into the sand here, there, and everywhere, undaunted by whoever is walking by, surfers, children, whatever, and they barely pause except to run to the next spot.  

I’ve been watching a bird with brown and white speckled feathers on his short oval-shaped body and a long arched beak.  The bird opens its beak one inch as it pokes down into the sand, poke, poke, poke, running along quickly, ahead or behind the next wave, skitter, skitter on its fast long legs.

Lavender Skies and Leaping Dolphins

A few mornings ago right after sunrise, the sky over the ocean was lavender, and dolphins leapt arcing in the air, while the birds skittered along the shore.  Maybe this was the same day the dog saved the girlfriend he loved from a pack of coyotes.

Seaweed Trees:  Pull Up the Roots

As I walked along the beach this morning after seeing the heroic dog, I saw a middle-aged couple looking intently at what looked like a large fallen tree with its root bed exposed to the air.  A long rope of seaweed, maybe 10-feet or so, wound out along the sand like a vine with bulbs and leaves.  At its base was what looked like a huge root system: a mass of intertwined branches, doming in toward the center from which the vine extended out like an umbilical cord.  We all looked into the center. 

The roots looked like the dog’s scars and the birds’ legs. 

"Pull up the Roots," the Talking Heads sing, "Wilder than the place we live in...I don't mind some slight disorder....Everything has been forgiven.... Pull up the roots, pull up the roots."