Sting-rays are large shadows cruising up and down the beach. My son wears some borrowed goggles to check before we swim. All clear. At first it seems cold, and then you can stay in for hours, just floating in a hook shape, your toes poking out, hands paddling like a sculler, hoping that nothing too bad is lurking beneath you, letting the light surf take you slowly back into shore. Then drying off with a salty crust mixed with sunscreen, your hair in stiff strands, the red-billed gulls shrieking at the German trampers.
We walk very slowly. Every step there are treasures to pick up: cat's eyes, a feather, a limpet shell patterned like a star-burst, pieces of kina and sand dollars, bones we try to identify, and once a desiccated seahorse. Every now and then a shag surfaces then dives back down. We try to guess where it will re-surface. Is it even still there? It seems to take forever. Perhaps it has drowned or been eaten by a shark. It's gone for sure and then Oh! There it is!
The estuary is wide, strands of the river thread and plait themselves down to the sea. Small-scale sand bars build and ripple, a deep pool forms against the contours of the rocks, which hold barnacles and limpets. Wading across isn't too hard, although our feet sink into the soft sand and the water runs over our knees. Then we are on the other side, against the cliff. The rock formations call out to be photographed but I can't capture the light and shade.
Later, as I write in my journal my daughter can't keep quiet, she chatters to herself. As the night goes on even the silence isn't silent. The cicadas, the sound of the surf, the birds, all constant white noise to replace the white noise of the city and suburbs – cars, radios, dogs, mowers and people, people, people.
By Helen Heath
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 New Zealand License.
Mix & Mash 2011 - Literature Remix Category http://www.mixandmash.org.nz/
