Rising tide

The view of the salt marsh from our backyard.

A cold, gray, dreary April morning, we drive to the summer house and notice that we have a new neighbor.

But thank God, the nearby cottages are still occupied by our friends from years past.

No, this stealthy neighbor is slowly moving in and changing the geography of our coastline.

Last fall, Hurricane Sandy caused major overnight modifications to this salt marsh, flooding the nearby wetlands.

However, we thought the brackish water would creep back into the shallow inlets and during ebb tide flush out of the salt wedge estuary.

But it hasn’t.

When we were children, my brother and I carried our nets, fishing line, bait and pail to this salt marsh, which was inhabited by blue crabs.

Tying a fish from our morning catch onto one end of the fishing line, we flung the bait into the center of the channel.

It was a waiting game. Sometimes we left without even one tug on our line. But when the crabs were hungry, they grabbed the fish with their large pincers and started devouring their catch.

The tug was ever so slight at first; then the tension on the line increased as the crab tried to swim away with the fish.

Pulling the line in slowly, we placed the net over the water just behind the crab; and the crustacean was in the net with one swoop.

We also headed down to the estuary to dig for clams.

Turning over large stones that had been covered with water a few hours earlier, we looked for telltale holes in the muddy soil. We then began scooping the wet earth with quahog shells, searching for the prize.

Sometimes there were slim pickings in the clam cove, but other times the soft-shelled clams were in hiding together, nestled in a community a foot deep. They would squirt at us as we tossed them into the pail.

Later, my brother and I took turns dragging the heavy pail all the way home.

Today, I stand in our backyard and gaze at the untilled farmland leading to the salt marsh. Instead of the distant tributaries that have been there since childhood, I see a river that could shortly encroach on my next door neighbor’s property.

The sand on this coastal flood plain is shifting, and it is highly probably that someday the land will be taken back by its original owner.

But on the bright side, if there is a bumper crop of blue crabs this year, it will be a cinch to carry the pail home.

A mid-November reprieve

Two weeks after Hurricane Sandy and a few days after a nor’easter, my husband and I sit on the picnic table at Fogland State Beach.

“Most of us have inner barometers; certainly I do,” wrote New England author Gladys Taber in “Country Chronicle.” “During an autumn storm mine is very low. My movements slow, and I have a tendency to sit by the fire and just wait for the rain to stop even if what I had planned to do, does not involve going outdoors. I listen to the wind, and I think melancholy thoughts. A three-day nor’easter induces me to disbelieve in the blue of the sky above the black clouds.”

Bundled in a wool coat and boots, I am comfortable in the bright sunshine, light wind and forty-something temperatures. The Sakonnet has gotten over its temper tantrum and now at low tide is as tranquil as a freshwater pond rippling gently in the breeze.

It is so peaceful here.

Looking back over these last few weeks, I think we are all in need of a well-deserved break.

Along with the wild weather, we had to weather the presidential election, which wore us out.

 “I just wish our elections had more dignity,” wrote Taber in her 1967 book “Stillmeadow Calendar.” After all, it isn’t the party with the most balloons and buttons, the loudest cheering sections and biggest signs at conventions that may provide responsible government. I think we should educate children from the first grade on to have more interest in political affairs. And our whole system of electing a president should be studied and changed, if necessary, so that elections can take place in a practical, economical manner.”

Forty-five years later, the American voter has been bombarded with over $6 billion worth of robocalls, Super PAC TV ads, and political cards stuffed in mailboxes, and we are exhausted.

No matter whether our candidates won or not, we breathe a collective sigh of relief that it is over.

We drive along Neck Road and Seapowet Avenue, stopping every once and a while to watch animals grazing: horses wrapped in blankets, wooly sheep wearing winter coats and a lone burro in his pen.

A flock of Canada geese congregate in a sheltered duck pond. Common residents of southern New England, the pale gray geese have long black necks and a large white chinstrap. Most often sighted overhead flying in a V-pattern and making a honking sound, the waterfowl are content to drift soundlessly on secluded waters.

Over the past few weeks, these stately and majestic birds have battled hurricane-force winds, heavy rains and freezing temperatures just like us. But today they rest.

We should too.

 

 

     

 

 

 

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy

Five days after Hurricane Sandy, we drive to the Tiverton summer house. The sky is robin’s-egg blue, and it as warm as a day in June.

Incredibly, the blue hydrangeas on the side of the house are blooming again, and the purple morning glories creep up the porch as if they haven’t a clue it’s November.

Outside of twigs scattered throughout the yard, the property is just as we left it last Saturday: the aluminum boat overturned and belted to its trailer, the redwood picnic table upside down, our powerboat hugging the back of the house where it is anchored.

Last Tuesday, the day after the storm, my husband was here; and the salt marsh had transformed into a river that crested 20 feet from our neighbor’s back door. But today, it lies dormant, taking a rest from its exertion this past week.

Reflecting the sky and mirroring the sun, the Sakonnet sparkles like blue diamonds and barely ripples in the light wind. Yet, here along the beach Sandy left its tracks.

All along the waterfront are huge rocks, carried on the high surf and deposited in the road and on our neighbors’ front lawns. It looks more like the terrain on the moon than a sandy beach.

A picnic table situated on the flat curve of horseshoe-shaped Fogland State Beach looks like it has been set down in the middle of a desert, surrounded by hills of sand.

Yet, despite these signs and the lack of electric power for days, the swipe Sandy made on our coastline left no scars; and we thank God for the close escape.

Before the hurricane, the Weather Channel was background noise in our house; and after the onslaught, CNN took its place.

Images of Sandy’s wrath on Staten Island and all the other seaside towns in New York and New Jersey flash across the screen. The vision brings tears to my eyes, as the death toll of over a hundred continues to rise.

Most of the stories tell of the bravery of countless souls: the N.Y. firemen fighting a conflagration in hurricane winds, neighbors helping neighbors, strangers helping anyone in need.

Yet there are also those of people behaving badly: homeowners who are afraid to leave their battered houses because thieves wait in the wings ready to loot, or The Bad Samaritan, who refused to open his door to a women begging for refuge for her two little boys, who ultimately drowned in the storm.

Today in Tiverton we pick up tree limbs and armloads of rocks. We move on unscathed but aware that if the trajectory of the storm had veered a little to the right …

 

  

The calm before the storm

Those who live by the sea have the deepest respect for their fickle neighbor. They cherish the calm demeanor and tranquility of their fair weather friend, but they also know when it is agitated, slamming surf and kicking up sand, it is time to get to higher ground.

Many years ago, I met an elderly gentleman, an officer in the Coast Guard Auxiliary who assisted the Coast Guard on weekend patrols on Mount Hope Bay and the Sakonnet River.

In the 1930s, his family converted a small fisherman’s shack near Sakonnet Point in Little Compton into a summer cottage.

Coming of age there, he often sailed around the lighthouse or paddled his canoe up and down the coast, edging his way around the many boats in the fishing fleet.

He worked at the Fo’c’s’le, a popular seaside tourist spot, opening quahogs, shelling lobsters and peeling potatoes.

Then the 1938 Hurricane struck without warning.

“We lost the house, and I almost lost my father,” he told me. “He was washed out to sea from Sakonnet Point all the way down to Taylor’s Lane. He watched five people drown, and he couldn’t save them. He had cracked ribs and was bruised all over, but he came out alive.”

Fifty homes in his Sakonnet Point neighborhood were destroyed.

When my parents bought land near Fogland Beach in Tiverton in the winter of 1969, they learned that their neighbor’s cottage had been beachfront property. Fifteen years earlier, Hurricane Carol had dragged it to its current site, three streets from the water’s edge.

In 1991, Hurricane Bob made landfall over Newport. When the water receded, one of the rental cottages along our beach had been torn from its foundation and set down in the middle of the salt marsh.

Last year, on the day before the arrival of Hurricane Irene, we secured the summer house and boat the best we could and flipped the picnic table. Some of our neighbors had boarded up their windows, and most of the residents had already evacuated. When we drove away, we understood the very real possibility that upon our return, everything might be gone: the summer house destroyed and our yard underwater.

Here we go again.

This morning under sunny skies, with no wind and unseasonable warmth just a few days before November, my husband and I repeated the drill.  

An unprecedented fluke of nature, Hurricane Sandy, a Category 1 hurricane embedded in a nor’easter, is barreling up the coastline.

God help us.