Sleeping with Slugs

They're green, they're surprisingly fast, they're very hungry, and they're tramping through my bed. Every ten minutes or so I have to stop what I'm doing, search out intruders and do the pinch and flick. Things a guy puts up with to 'go-light'. At this moment - as I lay here under my tarp hiding from the rain - a big one munches on an apple core I tossed him, two more are heading straight for me, tubulous eyes extended, mouth thingies extended, bodies extended in a full-out slither. Just out of reach as of yet but...





Twelve of them, I went out to 'relocate' three of them and found an even dozen! Ooosh!

Now I've got myself spooked over the high tide tonight, coming into a full moon you see. Logs are moving about the beach a surprising amount every night. I lay out an escape route to the highest ground possible, a meager three more feet. A scramble up the scree slope would get me higher but no way to get gear up there. Stormy days and highest high tides suck... I'm being forced higher and higher up the beach as the logs continue to start drifting. Thousands of them, rolling and colliding, and the biggest of them pounding the beach like great battering rams - backing out and slamming in. I can feel the big impacts through the sand at my feet. Powerful things these waves... high tide is at midnight, guess I'm sitting up to keep watch. Full moon in two days.



I spent the day scratching my head looking at a field of dumpers. Between here and the outside I can count six or seven layers of crests at any one moment. It's a 'You got yourself into this now how are you getting yourself out?" moment. Low or high tide the big ones are still out there, always over six feet, the smaller ones over four. High tide the reef is covered but it allows the big ones to reach shore. Low tide I risk being washed back over the reef. Full high tide the beach is awash with a sea of floating logs. Sighhh...



Found a bunch of whale bones yesterday. A jaw, a few vertebrate, and what I think may be the flipper  joint bones. Like giant mushrooms. I'm surprised how light whale bone is, I'd expect it to be heavy and strong coming from such a large animal. It's light, and porous, and fiberous. Fun beach-combing here, fishing floats and aerosol cans with japanese writing on them - plastic water bottles by the dozens - blue glass and a beach of stones pocked and dimpled and perforated. I picked a little one up as an amulet. Reality is though that I can't carry anything with me so I limit myself to the tiniest pieces of beach glass that I collect from the beaches I stop at, and which I gift to people I meet. Beach Jewels - the one thing I can take, and enjoy, and not feel like I'm slighting the sea's generous accomodation.