Camellias Wait in the Wings

The period following Epiphany, after the holiday cheer is packed away for the next eleven months, can feel drab and dreary. Bare rooms seem spiritless without the decorations, and there are no lights on houses and trees to twinkle up the dark midwinter evenings.

But, soft! What wonder on yonder shrub awaits? Just outside my kitchen window, camellia buds, green spheres packed tight with petals, respond to the solstice shift in light. By mid January, the cocooned flowers become impatient and begin to peek out, then over the next month, they break free of their restraints and unfold into frilly delights. Their yellow powdery stamens against satin magenta petals are one of the most beautiful color and texture combinations on the island. They’re a joy on the still short days, happy harbingers of February’s azaleas, then the parade of spring growth island wide. They smile through the cold.

On the Surface: A Fleeting Freeze

Ice on a puddle is a quiet photo subject, but watching as the frozen flow patterns were revealed by the rising sun this morning was a lovely start to an otherwise ordinary Sunday. Over about 30 minutes, the puddle transformed from a seemingly featureless gray surface into sparkles and spikes and the reflected sky and trees giving it dimension and character before the sun melted it all away, as if I’d dreamed it. Radiating crystals around the remains of a battered palm tree fan mimicked the shape of a live fan of fronds, and a face with a penetrating stare appeared at the top edge, à la David Popa.

Ice is rare on Tybee; its ephemeral nature makes it tantalizing. Those minutes of pure concentration at the edge of the silent marsh freed me from all thoughts other than wondering what this small patch of hardened water might show. My tingling fingers were a small price to pay for the wonder of seeing the designs emerge—the ice seeped into my psyche.

In other seasons, Tybee puddles are vibrant pools with layers of chartreuse loblolly pine pollen swirling on their surfaces, or the ripples of raindrops pulsing out toward their edges. And as with puddles everywhere in the world, the pleasure of splashing through ours (in my white shrimper boots) is a reliable delight. At the beach, tide pools around the jetty rocks are temporary ecosystems of starfish and hermit crabs; the tiniest bodies of water here are those trapped inside bivalve shells after the tide recedes.

“‘Tis not in the high stars alone,
Nor in the cups of budding flowers,
Nor in the redbreast’s mellow tone,
Nor in the bow that smiles in showers,
But in the mud and scum of things
There always, always something sings.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

A Gleam in the Gloom

Even on days when the sun struggles to shine, in the low light and clouds of winter, jingle shells shimmer, and like a magpie I run to them. A large orange jingle was my first prize shell when I was a little girl in a gingham bathing suit, whose back side was more tanned than her front, ever leaning over to see what shells the waves brought in. So they are for me a memory trigger, too, of treasure found. I’ve never found a paper nautilus or a junonia or even a shark’s tooth, but I get almost as excited by a pretty jingle as I do by more rare shells.

That common shell’s gleam in the gloom reminds me a little of the Viking’s mineral sunstones that historians suggest were used for navigation in stormy weather—they could perceive light and thus celestial positions even on the most cloud- or snow-cloaked days. It should be a Winter Solstice symbol…glimmering hope in the darkness.

Flipping Out for Flip Flop Day

Does anyone else snicker at the term “toe thong”? It’s right up there with “toe cleavage.”

The third Friday in June is National Flip Flop Day; in honor of this Silly Event, I did a little digging into their history. There’s an ancient Egyptian pair of similar sandals dating back to 1500 B.C. in the British Museum, and Greeks, Romans and Mesopotamians all wore versions, but our current dime store iteration is more akin to the straw Japanese zori seen by soldiers in WWII (hence their name “jandals” in New Zealand), and took off in America with the boom of surfing culture in the 50s and 60s.

Now, of course, they’re ubiquitous outside the bounds of Hawaii and California, too. Flip flops are the essence of summer fashion nationwide: skin bearing, care free, and colorful. Like t-shirts and baseball caps, they’re worn by adults and kids, rich and poor, cool and dorky. Even the Dalai Lama wears them!

On Tybee, individual flip flops wash ashore like so many other objects; on Tybrisa Street, there’s a fence where the owners tack them up as their ode to flotsam. All hail the heel-slapping footwear of bronzed beach deities!

Pro tip: If you blow out your flip flop, that little plastic square that keeps loaves of bread sealed up will keep the plug of the thong in place. (History geek bonus: The bread clip was invented in 1952 by Floyd G. Paxton; they’re manufactured by his Kwik Lok Corporation in Yakima, Washington.)

Ghost Crab Burrows

I’ve combed Tybee Island’s North Beach for eight years now; veteran though I may be, I’m still noticing new things. On a recent predawn walk, I saw ghost crab burrow holes as I often do, but saw for the first time how different they could be. One was what I normally see, a spray of colorful shell shards off to one side, where the crab was digging down and hit a layer of crushed shells that it flipped out behind it. Another was as if the crab were OCD—not a shell or piece of anything around, just an intricate pattern from its legs scurrying on damp sand. The third was what I’ve jokingly referred to as a stoner crab’s burrow, with peanut shells and other bits tossed around in no particular pattern, not dug up from beneath but as if this scavenger had the munchies and found the beach’s version of a convenience store…

Beach Brain Activity

When I'm sitting on the beach, watching pelicans dive and waves crash, enjoying the warmth of the sun on my skin and the pleasant chatter of my family, I'm not driven to accomplish anything. If I take a novel, I read a few pages...then regret weighing down my beach bag with it. But one thing we like to do, being competitive word lovers, is a word scramble game I call Word Squeeze...pulling out every possible word from a single word's letters.

"BEACHCOMBING," for example, gives you: beach, comb, bomb, hinge, binge, bob, bib, gin, ache, aching, bin, ban, in, on, an, gone, bone, cone, ace, nice, ice, mice, cab, gab, nab, bane, cane, game, came, chin, chic, go, no, ho, hob, hog, bib, come, came, name, gnome, home, gob, homing, ham, gam, bam, moan, man, men, mob, mace...and probably many more. 

We choose a word, then everyone mashes its letters for thirty minutes. My Aunt Marion, now in her nineties, almost always wins.

Here are a few other beach words you could try:
Fisherman
Lighthouse
Pelican
Seashell
Swimsuit