Sunday, 9:00 AM. 63 degrees, wind WSW, light. The channel is lightly wrinkled, the sky clear with a few high, puffy white clouds, and the barometer predicts partly cloudy skies. We had a few nice showers yesterday that left a trace of rain in the gauge.
The walk along the beach was exceptional this morning, with sandpipers flitting about decoying their nests.
The primary colonizing plant of our Lake Superior beaches is the beach grass, Amophilla breviligulata, which spreads by tenacious underground rhizomes. There is some confusion as to whether it is strictly native or was introduced by conservationists, since it is a very widespread species. At any rate it does its job very well and is everywhere, forming dense stands on the beaches just back from the water’s edge. It is followed further back from the water by other soil-holding plants such as blueberries, poison ivy, wild roses, meadow sweet, raspberries, and finally sand cherry, dogwoods, red maple, ash and white pine, until at last the northern forest takes over. All this succession can be interrupted at any time by wind, wave and fire. There is a constant dynamic struggle between the water and the land.
In nature some conflicts never end, and the essence of all life is continual struggle for survival and dominance, and a striving toward mystical goals, individual and communal.
The ecology of the beach seems a fitting metaphor for the ecology of the soul.
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