Prickly. If I had to chose one word to describe the dry zone between the shore and the tree-and-grass line, prickly would have to be the one. It's a place where I walk carefully, watching where I step, occasionally stopping to knock spines out of my sandals, brush ants off my legs. It's where everything is hard-edged, sharp-pointed, splintery. Here, driftwood logs, tossed up long ago beyond the reach of all but the highest tides, slowly crumble into dust and slivers; small plants grow, dry out, twist, break, and die, leaving random sticks and straws helter-skelter.
It's a zone of fantastic shapes.
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| Log end, Oyster Bay Shoreline Park |
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| Pixie-cup lichens along a crack in a log. |
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| Typical mix: splinters, dead sticks, lichen, yarrow, peppergrass. And an old spike, part of an ancient, crumbling dock or float. |
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| Large-headed sedge, Carex macrocephala. Even the leaf edges and tips are sharp. And the head is vicious! |
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| More lichens. |
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| And more. I have trouble making sense of this one. My eyes cross. |
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| I just don't know... Book, as I found and left it, with an ant as only reader. Quote from the page: "... a place within the great scheme of things ..." "... unpredictable ..." |
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