Tide, Feather, Snow_ A Life in Alaska - Miranda Weiss [94]
I was a hulking beast next to these delicate beauties. I was an outsider invading places I should never have been at all. To step solely on bare rock was impossible. Eventually, I’d put my boot into a clear pool, mucking up the water. I’d bulldoze a cluster of barnacles with the bottom of my shoe, erasing years of growth. So I pictured myself as six inches tall, clambering gently among nearly head-high boulders the size of grapefruits and wading through seaweed that created slick expanses I could slide across for what would be micro-miles. Were these creatures—sea lemon, whelk, and moon snail—the vestiges of the Big Bang? Were they celestial orphans fallen from space into the edge of the sea? These gelatinous, eyeless, and shelled creatures—were they what we were a million years ago?…or perhaps what we would become?
They inhabited the fragments of myself: part armorless sea slug, part well-protected snail. Clawed and spined, and then sometimes boneless, without shells, just a naked piece of flesh. I felt intermittently thrashed and tough, exposed and as if I’d crawled under a very large rock. Then, some nights at the bar, like a fresh piece of detritus thrown by currents to the crabs.
I looked up to see my friends scattered across the acre of exposed rocks. Strong, independent people, I thought. But seeing this colorful and outlandish marine life alone made me intermittently sad.
WHEN THE TIDE started to turn, I saw it in the lowest pools first. Still kelp began to get restless; torn bits of seaweed started moving up the beach. The pools swelled, and bubbles floated across their surfaces. The bay was coming back to erase what I’d seen over the previous hours. It was taking the pools back, bringing the creatures home. The rising water pushed me back up the beach. But I stopped and looked out across the rocks and the bay. There I was at the edge of the sea. Not a boat person or a carpenter. Not born and raised here, nor even having lived here long. I was no commercial fisherman nor fisherman’s wife. The water began sneaking up my boots and would come up fast. I could stand there and pull the bay up around me like a skirt. I could stand there until it pressed against me, holding me tightly, coldly, indifferent. But I turned and walked up the beach.
As the bay came back in, it pushed countless jellyfish toward the shore. Some were clear with deep orange centers, while others just gave off a moon white glow. They trailed long ragged tentacles and could have been a fleet of spaceships making their way home. The tidepools filled then disappeared. The rocks were smothered. The seaweed lifted then drowned. It is always quicker leaving than entering another world.
That evening, as clouds hiked up the backs of the mountains toward the summits, on the camp stove I cooked a big pot of mussels I had yanked off nearby rocks. When they opened, they let out juice of the sea which became a rich broth at the bottom of the pot. We shared them all around, picking the bits of meat out of the shells with our fingers and dipping bread into the salty juice.
Joel built a fire on the beach and we sat around it long after dinner, sipping wine out of mugs and passing around a flask of whiskey. There were no stars and there wouldn’t be any for weeks. Then, you’d begin to be able to barely make them out with the corner of your eye. If you looked at them straight on, they’d disappear. We watched the sun sink in the north. A gold disc hung in the sky above the sun’s exit. It was after 11 P.M., but it was still light enough to read outside. A skiff moved by, breaking the sheet of water that had lain flat after dinner. Small breakers rolled into