An Incident at Sea/Picture of Nature Boy

Tuesday afternoon the tide was out and we decided to go for a walk in the ocean. Just off shore, about twenty five feet or so, is a large sandbar that extends down the length of the beach for at least a mile, perhaps more. When you get in the water, it gets about chest deep and then in the space of two or three steps, the water is barely over your knees. (It's all the sand that they replenished to the beach about three years ago.) All afternoon we had watched people walking slowly up and down the sandbar looking down into the water for something, for what we couldn't tell.

Now we were out amongst them. The water is crystal clear, you can see every swirl and dip in the sand's surface. It is a barren landscape except for the occasional shell or stone that somehow has been left on top. It's those that the walkers are seeking, I suppose, something that no one else has had a chance to admire.

I thought I had scored when I spotted a large object and bent down to pick it up. It was a conch shell, but the conch was still in it.

"Oh, you touched it."said L."Eew"
"It's nature."I said with my knowledge of the Discovery Channel. "It's a conch. We are in the middle of nature here."
"Wash your hand, nature boy."

I am so scientific, not. I am more like one the sand fleas laying here. I take in oceans of information retaining only the best little parts. I tossed the conch back in, further out where it was less likely to be picked up again. Meanwhile, L was telling me the stories of the riverwalks with the Girls Scouts down the mighty Illinois. The mighty Illinois in mid-summer is quite walkable with long stretches of very shallow water, I know that from trying to canoe down that river in August. You do more dragging than paddling. Anyway, L was remembering how everyone slept so good the night of riverwalk day, so good, so quiet, so deeply. Speaking of deeply, we had drifted out a little ourselves on the sandbar and now were in water about waist deep. And that's when I saw the shadow.

It was a big shadow, about forty yards away and maybe twenty feet further offshore than we were, moving (moving!!) in a straight line along the edge of the sandbar, coming closer to us by the second. It was rectangular, so at first I thought it was the shadow from a kite or the odd edge of a cloud, but there were no kites and all the clouds were way off near the horizon.

Now it was twenty yards away, still twenty feet farther out than us. I was fascinated. This was as good or better than the Discovery Channel. What a big thing to be moving so smoothly.....? Then a voice nearer the shore called out, "What is that?"

Which is what I should have been wondering.

It, and it is an IT, is even with us now and I can see that the thing is eight or nine feet long and three feet wide and I start thinking s h a r k. This is the point at which my brain starts feeding me, not all the little best parts but all the information it's ever glimpsed about sealife in the past fifty years. The thing is very big and I am trying to recall what you are supposed to do if you spot a shark. Stay still? Run like monkeys? Slap the water like a seal? I even wonder if it's possible to punch something that big through so much water and I am watching it for any signs that it might be turning our way...but I don't want to panic and now ...and now...

the rectangle has eased on down the beach...

It occurs to me that we are standing very still.

"Was that a manatee?" the voice, a woman's, asks.
"Beats the hell out of me." I answer scientifically.

We went to go see some manatees about eight years ago, but they were in a muddy river and we were standing on asphalt. They were about as big as the shadow and just as rectangular.

"It's supposed to look like a blanket is floating in the water." The woman said helpfully.
"Yes." I thought it did look like a kind of floating blanket, a huge, giant, moving-faster-than-us floating blanket."Yes, I think it was a manatee."

(god, I hope it was a manatee.)

She was thrilled to have been so close.

She was not as close as us.

We were nearly killed.

Yes, I know, manatees are as gentle as cows, but I have known some very rugged, aggressive cows and and ... and would the manatees mind having a buoy put on them saying "NICE MANATEE, NOT SHARK" on them? It would scientific and keep them from getting wacked by boaters. It would also help get us to the next ocean walk.

"Oh,"said L, "that was big! This place has all kinds of stuff like that, and those sharp black thingies."
"Horseshoe crabs."
"Yeah, too much nature."

I reminded her that we were in the ocean and that on the riverwalks down the Illinois there must have been snapping turtles, rattlesnakes and cottonmouths.

"Yeah, but I'm a citygirl now" she says."I could handle Nature then, now I just want to relax."

Me too. I'm going to get all my science experience from the Discovery Channel from now on and I don't need any more floating blankets of death, thankyou very much.

We slept very well that night, so good, so quiet, so deeply.

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Joe(Picture of Nature Boy)Nation