|
Feb 3 1852 - The forcible writer stands bodily behind his words with his experience. He does not make books out of books, but he has been there in person... -- Henry D. Thoreau |
|
||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
February 3, 1999 |
|
at your own risk |
|||||
|
|
|
|
|||||
|
February 3 Newburyport boat ramp Plum Island Salisbury Beach
Copyright © 1998, Janet I. Egan |
|
The little nozzle for the end of the faucet is missing - umm, that would be in the cat shelter's sink not mine. The net effect of this is if you rinse anything under the faucet you splash yourself. Not that I stay really dry doing this anyway, but it's usually the big things that don't really fit in the sink to begin with that get me. I got wet enough that it almost but not quite diminished my joy at seeing the names Alexis and Chantal on the adoptions board. Yes, the booger cat and her sister have a permanent home - with people who don't mind snot. I got to know Alexis and Chantal really well from taking them to Brigham Manor several times, where they were very popular. Alexis is a love bug and Chantal is a cozy gigantic lump. And they are inseparable. I am overjoyed that they have finally settled into a real home together. Roy, who is a retired flooring contractor, has some expertise in plumbing and says he'll look for a shorter faucet as well as a better little directional nozzle thing. He says the reason we splash so much is that the faucet is way too long for the sink. Now that I look at it, of course he's right. So he's added modifying the faucet to fixing the broken tiles in the hallway on his list. Boy, between Roy and Bob we have a ton of handyman expertise on Wednesday mornings now. Despite my wet shirt, I had to go to the beach or beaches and look for birds. It was too nice a day not to. Besides that, I've developed a close personal bond with the three horned larks at Salisbury Beach. Where's the other horned lark? There are only two in the parking lot. I search the sea wall and the jetty and the beach and still only see two. Maybe the other one heard about the feeder at the house by the dump and wanted to see a lark sparrow.
Major waves were breaking over the jetty. Bigger than the big waves I mentioned in Sunday's entry. Not only that, a line of huge waves rolled straight into the river past Butler's Toothpick parallel to shore and never broke 'til they were well upriver. The rocks where the seals hang out were completely underwater - you'd never know there were rocks there - hence didn't stop the waves. If you look carefully at the picture you can also see a plume of spray where a wave is breaking over the south jetty (right side of picture). The north jetty (or as I've taken to calling it, the jetty of death, is in the foreground. A family group walked right past the signs onto the jetty and almost got stranded there by the tide. The attention getting yellow warning signs they put up after the guy got washed off the jetty and killed read: Attention This is supposed to be more intimidating than Danger Keep off Jetty? Who makes up the signage language? "Not designed for public access"? What?! Are they afraid future drowning victims will sue them for not making the jetty safe for a Sunday afternoon walk? Newsflash: the jetty is there to keep sand from blocking the mouth of the river - not for people to climb on and fish from. Ever wonder why none of the explorers in search of the fabled northwest passage entered the Merrimack? For that matter, why they didn't explore the Piscataqua? No, probably nobody outside the Merrimack Valley ever thought about it. In The Merrimack, Raymond Holden theorizes that the early European explorers like Cabot and Gosnold would have sensibly sailed outside the Isles of Shoals and hence wouldn't have seen the entrance to the Merrimack hidden by the dunes of Plum Island. In any case, they wouldn't have been able to enter it because of the sand bar across it. Most accounts report the depth at that time as 7 feet at low tide and 15 feet at high tide - with very powerful currents. Champlain's account of his 1605 voyage down the coast mentions some Indians telling of a river "which is very long and has shoals." Holden theorizes that this was the Merrimack , but it could also have been the Piscataqua as Champlain's description of the relative position of the Isles of Shoals and Cape Ann don't quite line up. John Smith has to have passed the mouth of the Merrimack in 1614 on his way to the Piscataqua, but he doesn't mention it. Plum Island must have really hidden it in those days. Even later into the Colonial and Federalist days, lots of ships ran aground on Plum Island. So it must have been a formidable hazard. Despite living here for all of my 47 years and some months, I have never been to the Isles of Shoals. Therefore, I can't say for myself how the entrance to the river looks from two leagues away. Guess I'll have to do a research trip to Appledore this summer to complete this line of thought with personal observation. |
|||||
The
tide was unusually high and coming in fast. I'd actually
tried to take a walk on the southern end of Plum Island and
had to turn back when the the waves started to reach the
dunes. A couple of dunes looked like a sand eating monster
had taken a bite out of 'em.