I wandered down to the dock last night with a glass of wine, before the approaching storms blew in from the west. The similarities in the nature of tonight’s approaching weather to the events of the past year or so prompted a bit of considered reflection. It was beautiful down there at sunset with the last rays of sunlight slicing in under the storm clouds on the horizon with that color that makes everything seem to vibrate with intensity, a slight breeze just licking at the moss hanging off the big oaks giving a hint of the violence to come, huge high tide from the full moon that hung large in the east and the Spartina Grass everywhere green. Usually we have mosquitoes by now but it’s so dry that they’re late. It’s about 350 ft out to the head of the dock. That’s kind of normal for here. Long, elevated structure of weathered pine, straight as a die to a sheltered end. We have two docks, a new one that parallels this one maybe 100 ft to the left. Its 75 ft longer and is new wood, new rails and a new shelter with new boat hoists and a new floating platform that you can tie-up to at the end. But I like the old one. Old, weathered wood, stained periodically with the remnants of bird dung, scuttling fiddler crabs and no hand rails so that when the wind is up and you’re walking out to the end, you get a sense of flying over the grass heads and oyster bars spread out under its length. Dolphin occasionally swim in on the tides, particularly when it’s big with the moon like last night, chasing “schoolers” up into the grass beds so far you think they might get stuck … but they don’t. They just turn in the wash and dart into deeper water, froth, Pluff mud, fish and grass boiling around them.
Bohicket Creek – 6/15/2011