Sands
How much of the world do we share with our kids when we know there are things we will not be able to save for them?
If someone had told us ages ago that the beach outside our home would shrink by 14 feet a year, would we have believed them? Would we have kept building houses on the eroding dunes? Done more to prepare?
It's been years, more than a decade if I'm honest since my feet last knew the feel of a particular stretch of beach. And yet, if I close my eyes, I can still picture the coastline, feel the roar of the waves echoing in my ears, the sand between my toes, and the indescribable joy of days spent by the shore.
I'm always in awe of natural landscapes—the vastness of the desert, the fairy tale quality of the forest, the majesty of the mountains, yet it's the ocean that always draws me back. The place I find to be a comfort, a respite from the business of the day or whatever else is happening in my life.
Cape Hatteras National Seashore, though, is special. It's the beach where I first fell in love with the world—a place where time always seemed to slow. Where I watched dolphins play in the surf and pelicans dive for fish. Where I learned to swim and savor the explosion of light the rising sun brings.
Some of my earliest memories are of running up and down the beach outside my childhood home on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. My dad would take me on evening walks, flashlight in hand, to try to spot the crabs scurrying along the sand; my mom would wake me early to watch the sun rolling over the horizon and help me spot the dolphins playing in the surf; my brother and sister and I spent countless hours jumping in the waves. The dog would disappear for hours over the sandy banks, eventually returning crab legs dangling out of her mouth. Her day well spent. Idyllic, yes, but I was also aware of the precariousness of it all from a young age. It's the place where I first witnessed how much power humans have. To save and destroy.
I haven't been back since my parents sold the house the summer before I went to college. I've thought, of course, of taking my daughter there now. It is, after all, a piece of me, yet I've hesitated. How much of the world do we share with our kids when we know there are things we will not be able to save for them?
I can't pretend to know the answer, but I also can't help but wonder if previous generations of parents were ever worried about explaining all the things we're losing. I went through stages of being obsessed with various animals as a kid: Wolves, Siberian Tigers, Orcas, Elephants. I understood some of them to be endangered, even that they were endangered in some way because of human activity, and yet I think, and maybe it was because, for the most part, they were things far away, there was sort of an acceptance of that's what happens.
Storms are scary on the Outer Banks. We'd sit on the covered deck when lightning storms rolled in, the stilted house swaying in the wind. When I was a baby, my parents and I once got stranded on a road starting to flood (that road later became a bridge). A generous passerby stopped to rescue us. I grew up hearing that story almost every time we went over the bridge or when the forecast predicted a big storm. I can recall listening to my parents' talk and worry about the beach outside our home becoming smaller. And as much as I loved watching the dolphins and the other wildlife— especially the pelicans, which I still find mesmerizing—I also witnessed how human-made pollution affected them.
These days we live not far from another beautiful stretch of coastline. My daughter and I will stand in the water letting the waves bury our feet before wandering up and down the beach, sometimes with the dog, sometimes slower, collecting seashells, seaweed for the compost and bits of plastic to throw in the trash. It's depressing how much tiny plastic has suddenly accumulated on our little stretch of beach. Where once I could go days without finding any, now we collect a bag worth of plastic pieces every time we go. What will the beach look like when she's my age? I hope she'll be able to beach comb and not worry about plastic bits, that she'll spot the occasional seal playing in the surf and starfish in the tide pools.
Beaches show you how powerful the world is, the crash of the waves, the pull of the tide. They make you feel small, just one tiny part in a more extensive web, yet what happens when humans play an outsized role in that world? If we knew decades ago of everything we would lose, would we still make the same choices?
The entire stretch of barrier islands, where I first fell in love with the natural world, is now at great risk. The beaches my parents worried about years ago are now shrinking by more than 14 feet a year in some areas. The people who live in the towns that dot the shore are considering how much they are willing to pay in taxes and other fees to save the land. It's a fight many know they will eventually lose. At the same time, developers continue to build on the shifting barrier islands, and tourists continue to flock to the coastline. It has a bit of a party at the end of the world vibe, which I find hard to wrap my head around but also makes me question what I owe the people and the places I travel to.
Standing on a different stretch of beach, I watch as my daughter gently picks up sand dollars and then admittedly not so gently tosses them back into the water-returning them in her words to their home.
The point is that we never quite know the impact we can make. On a sand dollar, on a stretch of beach, on the larger world. It behooves us to stay alert to the possibilities for the things we can save, to the better world we can create while acknowledging and somehow taking responsibility for our role in the things we can't.
— Bridget
Reading: If, like me, you can't stop staring at those images from the James Webb Space Telescope, here are a few things we can learn from them. Finally, starting to read Nick Offerman's Where the Deer and the Antelope Play and really enjoying it. And in the Chicago Tribune: “Persistent farmer whose cows died from a mysterious disease helped unravel the origin of toxic chemicals,” looks at the PFAS that are everywhere and the cost we pay for them.
Working: Excited to be finishing up a piece on sound mapping for Modern Farmer, working on a story on compostable fashion for NexusMedia and an article on the best vegan ingredients for Martha Stewart. (Send me your ideas).
Published: "The Oyster Farmers Working to Address Aquaculture's Big Plastics Problem," for Modern Farmer and "How Climate Change Is Affecting Pregnancy," for Parents.