It’s true, I simply cannot deny just how much I love the ocean and quiet early morning walks along the beach! I love the sound of the wind as it whips across the open water and I love the smell of salt air. I love the kind of roar the ocean makes as each swell rises and falls, as if the earth were rocking back and forth. In the calmness of early morning, I love to watch shallow waves as they curl and roll up the sandy beach then quietly, almost timidly retreat. I love the feeling that I get knowing that the action of the sea has gone on for eons before my arrival on earth and will continue for eons after I am gone. I just cannot imagine living anywhere in the world where I cannot, at the very least, drive just a few short miles in order to walk along the shoreline and watch the ocean with its soothing, hypnotic pulse.
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When I decided to start this blog and I had selected the theme or template that I would use, I knew exactly which slide I wanted for the header. The sunrise was taken at Crane Beach, Ipswich, MA in the late 70’s. At that time, it was meant as a possible cover for a book about solar power that was being written by a Harvard physicist. Solar power was an enormously popular subject then due to oil shortages and rising fuel prices. Sounds a little like deja vu, doesn’t it?
Since the late 70’s, I’ve considered myself an amateur environmentalist of sorts. Admittedly, however, when the concept of global warming and climate change were first presented, I was a bit skeptical. Then again, maybe I just didn’t want to believe it. But I have since changed my mind. And yet, during the past couple of weeks, it would take an article in a local newspaper and a late season Nor’easter, to make me realize just how much I’ve taken our barrier beaches for granted.
The article appeared in The Salem News on April 7, 2007 and was titled “Experts: Climate change may flood coasts” by Steve Landwehr. Please don’t get me wrong. I really haven’t had my head buried in a hole somewhere. I am fully aware of the fact that there wasn’t really much “new” in this headline. After all, we’ve been warned about rising seas due to global warming for about two decades now. It was just that, of all the beaches on the North Shore, Steve Landwehr chose to use Crane Beach, the very beach in my header photo, as his example. And, you see, up until now, my mind had been filled with images of polar ice suddenly crashing into the sea. Or the destruction caused by tsunamis and category five hurricanes. Or drought conditions and out of control brush and forest fires. I’d even read an article in a nature magazine about the permashield, how it has disappeared. The article was accompanied by some before and after pictures of kettle ponds that were full of water (before) and those that were nearly dry (after). But, these were all events that seemed to happen in “other” places. Then suddenly, or so it felt, I’m reading about how parts of our own barrier beaches, “particularly at Essex Point,” (Franz Ingelfinger, ecologist, Trustees of Reservations and owners of Crane Beach) have receded by as much as 600 feet! My yard has a frontage of 150 feet and the beach has receded by four times that!
Then, to add insult to injury, we experienced another late season Nor’easter. A Nor’easter that may not have been so bad were it not for the fact that it decided to “hang around” for about five days causing further erosion to our beaches and another year of devastating floods. Although I cannot recall specific figures, let’s just say it did some serious damage to Salisbury Beach too. In addition, I took a ride along the coast in Rockport, noticing with some shock how the sand had collected and was floating on the surface of the water like scum! I’d never seen anything like that before and I couldn’t help but wonder where it had all come from. Was it from a beach like Salisbury or Crane Beach? Had it been churned up by wave action and would it eventually settle back down to the bottom? Will it wash up onshore or be pulled out with the tide?
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Naturally, one would be pretty naive to think that global warming and climate change had an impact only on other places. Still, sometimes the gravity of the situation can only have an impact on the self only when we’ve read or, better yet, seen first hand instances of the changes that have already occurred. Sometimes, we need a kick in the pants to know what we’ve got and what we could lose.
Yes, it’s true, I simply cannot deny just how much I love the ocean and quiet early morning walks along the beach! It’s true, too, I just don’t want to lose them.
