Category Archives: friendship

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What do you see?

What do you see in this rock?

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heart of clay

I look for a broken heart on the beach. I nearly miss it, but here it is. I nearly miss it because it is so large. A clay heart, broken all the way through.

Here is a stealthie with my foot for scale.

Shoe selfie for scale, at the base of the broken clay heart.

Part of the cliff has recently collapsed. The heart must have broken during the slide. It will wash away in pieces now. Here is the cliff and you can see the scar of the slide. And the broken heart.

broken clay heart in the wall of the cliff, with the scar of a slide collapse

I tried walking the beach without oxygen. I did pick up rocks. I took a pulse oximeter with me. Carrying maybe three pounds of rocks, my oxygen saturations drop. Not well yet. 87 or below is not ok. It feels awful and exhausting too. Like being at a high altitude and not used to it. A pulse of 130 also does not feel great, normal being 70-100.

Pulse oximeter, with pulse 130 and oxygen saturation 87.

Thank goodness for the oxygen and the tanks that let me be mobile. Blessings and take care of your heart.

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Anomiidae

Walking the beach with a friend a couple of mornings ago, I keep finding shells with a dark marking in the center of the interior and nice shiny interior. Then I find a shell with the other half attached. The other half has a hole in it.

I look it up. This site comes up: http://www.bily.com/pnwsc/web-content/Northwest%20Shells.html. Wow. We filter through it and the shell is in the family Anomiidae. Specifically Pododesmus macrochisma, aka Green False Jingle. It attaches to rocks or other jingles or whatever through the hole. Then it disguises itself. The outside of the shells I found was diverse, some with barnacles. I found a young one, pink, and the radial ridges are visible on the shell.

Cool! Next I tried to identify the two different kinds of chitons. Uh-oh. There are LOTS of chitons. I run out of air very quickly. I will save the chitons for another day. I also returned two sea cucumbers to the sea. The second one scrunches up when I pick her up with a piece of seaweed. When I put the second one in the water, she relaxes. The first one was probably already dead.