COMMENTARY: Secrets from Seaside

Sher HoroskoBy SHER HOROSKO
Cape Charles Wave

June 19, 2013

After days of rain, the sun is bright and sure in a baby blue sky dotted with white sheep. I am itchy to jump in the car and explore.

My map is a scant line-drawing. I aim to travel up the thin gray line that runs parallel to the thick red one. That’s the extent of the plan. I head out, down the long dirt road, through the khaki-colored sea of wheat, turn into Cheriton and end back on the red line. This is the second time I’ve done this: it’s a bit like driving in a corn maze.

I try again, taking a random right off of Route 13. “This is it” I say out loud as I spot a road sign reading “Seaside.” The names we give to things usually make sense. Blackbirds are black. Bluebirds are blue. Pine Street has a row of pines (or at least it did once). Seaside is on the side of the sea.

I drive north with just the right amount of confidence.

It’s a different world back here. Navigating the twists in the road, I drive slowly, spotting boats at-the-ready on pull behinds and stacks of wire boxes six feet high. Even if I’d been taken here blindfolded and set free, I would know the sea was near. The evidence of love for the watery world is all around.

The road curves and opens up to a field of tomatoes, staked-up straight as soldiers, and teeming with green balls. Soon, the fruit will flash like cardinals and the land will be filled with the melodic sounds of Spanish. This language is music to me and it’s sung by a people who have always treated me kindly. Always.

On one side of the road, the draping fronds of corn are knee high. On another, the land is waiting for the farmer-man’s intent. Meanwhile, the copper-colored ibis plunge their beaks into the furrows of dark earth. I stop to watch.

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It has been a long time since I’ve seen this bird. Last year in Tucson, I made a ceramic spiral and seared it in a Raku fire. When I lifted my spiral from the flames and sprayed it with cool water, it looked just like the copper-green feathers of the White Faced Ibis.

Here I sit, window rolled down, looking over a field of my flying inspiration. Art, I’ve discovered, is an innocent reaching of the spirit, a longing to get closer and closer to the secrets of life. The pot, the painting, the weaving, and yes, the story, is a gift to others, a peak into our foray into the mysterious land.

A sign says “Public Landing.” I turn. In the flats hugging Red Bank, a dowitcher, with a beak half the length of a chopstick, raises her head and tracks me with a single eye. Unsure of my goodness, she stretches her wings and an uprush of wind lifts her safely to a nearby post. She sounds the alarm. Across the road a Red-winged Blackbird boy belts out his own version — and so I am announced to the wild world once more.

I cherish the winged-ones but it’s the flats that captivate me today. In the sparkling mud, created by the long-gone bodies of leaves and fish and bugs, a city is teeming with life. There is tunnel-digging, dinner being eaten in small-bowled pools, posing and teasing and yes, dueling for the girl. The fiddler crabs run from me but when I crouch down in a pile of clamshells, they get back to life in their thriving mud city.

“Why are you called fiddler crabs?” I inquire. They are too busy to answer me so I abandon my questions and watch. Two crabs, their eyes stuck on top of slim, brown poles, face off in the mud. Wielding their huge claws, both open them at the same time, lunge and lock on. They look at each other for a while, hard I suspect, till one releases his grip, pulls back and scuttles away. Their fight, if one may call it that, resembles children fencing with sticks.

There is the shore-world we see with our eyes: the wire boxes and well-worn boats, the tomatoes and corn reaching for sunlight. But there are worlds within this world that we share with the shelled-and-scaled-ones, winged-ones, fur-balls and slither-ins.

What a gift to live on the edge of such secrets, to share in the dazzle and brilliance . . . to become, hearts open, part of the secret ourselves.

Male Marsh Fiddler Crab, Mudflats of Red Bank (Photo by Sher Horosko)

Male Marsh Fiddler Crab, Mudflats of Red Bank (Photo by Sher Horosko)

Sher Horosko’s commentary is an occasional Wednesday feature of the Wave.

A recent transplant to the Eastern Shore, Sher writes on nature and spirituality at sherhoroskoblogdotcom.wordpress.com

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Comments

4 Responses to “COMMENTARY: Secrets from Seaside

  1. Bruce Lindeman on June 19th, 2013 7:38 am

    Beautiful, Sher! Surely, a book on your wanderings along the Shore must come from this!

  2. Barry Truitt on June 19th, 2013 8:59 am

    Loved your piece. Not to be picky, but you need to learn your birds. The ibis here are glossy ibis, not white faced. And if the alarm calling “dowitcher” at Red Bank landed on a post, it most assuredly was a willet, a common nesting shorebird on the seaside.

  3. Sher Horosko on June 19th, 2013 11:25 am

    Thank you so much , Bruce…

    And ah, the joys of learning birds and all else in life. In the Sonoran desert, my most recent home, we had to learn 12 different kinds of hummers and as many rattlesnakes. From afar, and with the naked eye, I saw the copper and green shining in the field. But glossy ibis it is then! Though my eyes saw a dowitcher, I will defer to yours Barry!

  4. Daniel Burke on June 19th, 2013 11:45 am

    Barry — the field of tomatoes are really a field of Solanum Lycopersicum but who cares! You need to learn your art. This woman is a gift to the Shore.