A walk on the beach

It’s our penultimate walk before Joe and Lexi head off to Winnipeg for a month. We opt for one of my favourite places on the island – a place I thought I knew well until the first time Joe and I went there. Like other walks I thought I knew, turns out not as well as I thought.

You can either access the beach via some stairs that were added several years ago or down a very steep path.

As Joe, who’s tried it himself, suggested, it’s impossible to take a photo that makes it clear quite how steep the path is.

One can’t really use the word driftwood to describe what you find on this beach. It’s more like driftlogs.

We sit down on one for a few minutes…

… so I can take the money shot.

This is the view that always takes a visitor’s breath away.

Closer inspection of the driftlogs can be quite fun.

Cast this piece in bronze…

… and you could probably convince someone that Henry Moore had been here. (Well, maybe not.)

So far this is my usual walk in this park. What I had no idea was accessible until Joe showed me a couple of months ago is what’s on the other side of the sand dunes.

There’s the mystery of the driftlogs final resting place.

I mean, what kinds of storms could have thrown these huge logs all the way back here? All I can safely say about the wind storms required to do this is that they were definitely accompanied by a power failure.

Also at the back of the sand dunes is a lagoon.

How do I not know this? Oh, well, now I do.

Heading back to the beach for a walk on the sand (unlike our last visit, this time we actually checked the time for low tide), we decide to leave a little love for other visitors.

Once we get on the sand we discover we weren’t the first people to have that thought.

Soon after we spot this heart in the sand, Lexi spots a log bobbing in the waves. Apparently she is always convinced that logs in the water are some sort of sea creature and she always has to try to get to them.

Whilst it may look as if she’s managing to run on water (pretty impressive if she were), there is actually a sand bar at this particular point.

Further down the beach, my day (week, month, year) is made by this sight.

Two starfish curled up together under a rock.

Time was when you used to be able to spot hundreds of starfish clinging to these rocks at low tide. I remember how amazed my friend Irmani was when I brought her here the first time she visited in 2011. It was one of the reasons this was one of my favourite places on the island. They were still bountiful when she returned in 2013.

Then disaster struck. The starfish population from Baja California to Alaska was almost completely wiped out by sea star wasting disease. It was absolutely heartbreaking.

Yesterday was the first time I’ve seen any starfish on this beach for a long time. And it wasn’t just these two. We saw some individuals and three clinging together on one rock. Half a dozen starfish. Not many, but more than have been spotted for a long, long time. God, I hope this is the first signs of recovery.

A hopeful end to a lovely walk.