> >The Consummate Beachcomber...
The bus has just stopped in front of the house. School's out. My youngest hops off with a smile. He's had a good day. He lets himself in, wanders into the office and gives me a hug. He has no homework, he says, can we go outside to play? The day is beautiful and I've been writing since early morning. But I'm on a roll. The words are flowing. I tell him to get a snack, practice his saxophone, and then we'll see. He is a compliant child and leaves to do my bidding. But I can tell he's disappointed.
A lovely fall sunlight streams into my office illuminating two items on the window ledge: a small bottle of silver dimes and a solitary chipped sand dollar. Both came from my father, a great man, funny, irreverent, a ball of fire; one who was always ready with a smile, a joke, a pat on the back, and a highball. When I was young, I never got to spend much time with him. During the week, he was usually busy chasing money and big men's dreams. On weekends, he'd be fishing with his buddies or coaching Little League so unless I tagged along, I rarely saw him. But I do have two special memories of time spent with Dad. Curiously, both involve money: people money (silver dimes) and beach money (sand dollars).
The dimes in the bottle came from magic tricks he performed when he came home from work. The ritual is etched in my mind. Always, in the early evening, at the first sound of tires crunching on the oyster shell drive, I dropped whatever I was doing and raced to the front door with a copper penny held in my outstretched hand. I watched as Dad climbed from the car and walked toward me, smiling. When he reached the doorway, he'd kiss me then take my copper penny and wrap it in a handkerchief from his vest pocket. With a flourish, he'd wave the cloth bundle through the air for a few moments before finally snapping it open to reveal - not an old copper penny - but a shiny-bright silver dime which I promptly retrieved and deposited in my jam jar bank upstairs.
Another moment in time, while vacationing on Jekyll Island, I remember riding with Dad in a Jeep down a long, dark, secluded dirt road hemmed in by thick pine forests. He stopped the car at one point and turned off the lights, motioning me to be very, very quiet. We sat silently in the still darkness for what seemed an eternity of minutes. Suddenly, without warning, Dad flipped on the lights and there in the road before us, stood a magnificent buck, frozen in place, blinking back at the blinding lights. He was a six point buck; a big, beautiful boy with shiny, muscled flanks and a slick, quivering nose, just like the one from my favorite fairytale who makes rubies tumble from the sky whenever he stomps his hoofs. And like that story, I blinked once and when I opened my eyes, the buck had vanished, disappearing back into the dark forest.
Dad continued driving down the road until we reached a deserted beach where he parked, grabbed a flashlight and my hand and, following the beam of light, led me toward the sound of waves. At the shoreline, we laughed as ghost crabs, routed from their seaweed shelters by the light, scurried to the safety of the sea. Dad caught and released a few of them and then taught me how to catch them, too, without getting pinched. Soon, we turned our attention to another creature the flashlight revealed: sand dollars. Scores of them lay stranded in the sea's foamy backwash, their supple brown fuzziness blending in with the wet, dark sand. We selected a few to take with us, and then Dad piggybacked me back to the car to return to the hotel.
The next day, we bleached the sand dollars and lined them up, one by one, on the deck railing outside to whiten in the sun. In my memory, those sand dollars resembled troops of battle weary soldiers returning home, their worn brown uniforms faded to a dry, brittle white, the color of old bones I sometimes find while beachcombing.
It's been thirty years since my father's death. Now, except for some old letters and WWII medals, I have only photos and memories to bring him back into my life. The expensive presents he brought me after each business trip are long gone and I have no recollection of the fancy parties or restaurants he took me to. What I do remember cost him little but his time. Time and the magic of the moment; of turning copper pennies into silver dimes and showing me the special secrets that nature hides in the darkness of the night: a stunned deer, a feisty crab, the sublime stillness of a sand dollar, and the first man I ever loved.
My son reappears in the doorway holding a football, ready for a game of toss. His face is eager like mine used to be when I thought my Dad might play with me. It's glorious outside. I push back from the desk. I've written enough for the day and I don't want to keep that special person waiting any longer. As I leave the office, I glance at the windowsill and silently thank my father for the gift of time he made to me so many years ago. Beach dimes. Silver dimes. Daddy's dimes. To a child, time, not pocket change, is your most precious commodity.
Jekyll Island
Jekyll Island is one of thirteen principal barrier islands strung - like pearls on a necklace - along 90 miles off Georgia's coast. Bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on one side and productive tidal marshes on the other, these "barrier" islands play a critical role in the formation and protection of the state's coastal beaches.
Geologically, barrier islands are regarded as "ephemeral entities" because they disappear and reappear whenever glacial ice sheets expand or retract which causes fluctuations in sea levels. When sea levels rise, low-lying coastal areas flood and disappear. When sea levels fall, ridges of coastal sediment are exposed creating barrier islands. Because "sea level change cycles" take tens of thousands of years to occur, barrier islands are relatively stable during "still times." Even so, tides affect their formation and powerful natural forces such as winds, waves, storms, and ocean currents can reshape their contours. Because the leeward sides of most barrier islands are shielded from strong winds, unusually complex intertidal ecoscapes can form providing habitat for a host of fascinating plant and animal life. In the United States, barrier islands are found along the Gulf Coast and the entire eastern seaboard from Florida to Maine. They range in age from 30,000 to 5,000 years old.
Georgia boasts some of the most pristine of these barrier islands and, of these, Jekyll Island is unique in both location and history. It boasts the most western sea port on the eastern seaboard, tucked far enough in that most hurricanes by-pass it as they make their way up north. (At least, that's the theory since the last hurricane to hit the island was in 1898!) The Island's marshes serve as important breeding grounds for shrimp, and Loggerhead turtles still stagger up the island's beaches to nest and lay their eggs. In the cooling autumn months, marsh grasses turn such a vibrant shade of yellow that Jekyll and adjacent barrier islands are referred to as the "Golden Islands."
Archaeological evidence suggests that Native Americans began visiting Jekyll as early as 2,500 BC. It is believed that the island was first occupied by the Timucuan tribe and later the Guale. In the mid-1500s, Spanish and French explorers reached the island and by the early 16th century, it became an outpost of the Spanish Mission system. The Spanish called the island, Isla De Ballenas, or "Whale Island," because its waters were important breeding grounds for Right Whales. Over the next two centuries, English settlers and French planters along with pirates, renegades, and slaves populated the island. In 1734, the island was named after the English lawyer Sir Joseph Jekyll, and in 1791, a Frenchman, Christophe Poulain du Bignon, purchased the island for the purposes of farming Sea Island cotton. A sad footnote to the island's history occurred in 1858, forty years after the United States abolished the importation of slaves, when a vessel named "The Wanderer" illegally made port near du Bignon's plantation with what was to be the last cargo of Negro slaves to America.
By the late 1800s, a group of wealthy industrialists purchased Jekyll Island and established the exclusive Jekyll Island Club, which for decades, became the social epicenter for America's economic elite. In 1947, the state of Georgia purchased the island and designated it a National Historic Landmark in 1978 enabling all to enjoy its beautiful beaches regardless of wealth or social status.
Sand Dollars
The flat sand dollar is also known as a keyhole urchin because of the five slots on its shell. From a class of spiny-skinned marine animals called Echinoids, sand dollars are related to sea cucumbers, star fish, and sea urchins. When dried, the skeleton of sand dollars look like large round coins stamped with petal-like patterns in the center. When alive, they resemble "fuzzy brown Frisbees," the fuzz being a very fine layer of hair-like spines which enable sand dollars to burrow in or slowly creep through sand. The holes in a sand dollar are actually "pores"; internal water-vascular systems that help move it through water.
Sand dollars live just beyond low water on top of or just beneath the surface of muddy or sandy areas. The best time to collect them is when the tide recedes or after a heavy storm, as many dead shells are dredged up by the action of the waves.
Links
www.jekyllisland.com
www.explorestsimonsisland.com/Jekyll_Island.html
www.n-georgia.com/costIslands.htm
www.rtkconsulting.com
www.indianz.com
www.coastalga.com
my.georgia.org/net/org/info.aspx?s=63893.0.0.3011
octopus.gma.org/Tidings/sanddollar.html
www3.ns.sympatico.ca/samson3/dollar.htm
www.seashells.org
www.assateague.com/sand-dol.html
home.hiwaay.net/~krcool/Astro/moon/moontides/
www.enature.com
www.nature.org
www.noaa.gov
www.reefed.edu.au
www.seed.slb.com