British Proverb

"When the Devil is old, he goes to a monastery."


(Photo of the Monastery of the Temptation, built on the backcountry site where Christ is said to have been interrogated by Satan, courtesy of Tamar Hayardeni and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Sunset over the pond

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Good Video: The Way I Tend To Be

I've loved this song for years but only recently searched out the video, which adds incisive context to the lyrics.

It's a detailed elaboration on the Irish saying, "The first thing to do when you're in a hole is stop digging."

The scenario of this short film is exactly how I used to feel after a break-up, like something of Great Import had happened and I had to lug this massive torch around against everybody's advice, while the world placed bets to see how long I could keep this shit up.

(Fifty-two years, as it happened. That's how long. So maybe there's a winner out there.)

Therefore, for the benefit of others like me – not such slow learners, I hope – here's a brief meditation on the smallness of your suffering and the worth of your life and time.

Don't wait for CNN to show up before you figure that out.

The lyrics themselves bring some Zen of their own to the party. I especially like, "‘Cause it turns out hell will not be found \ Within the fires below \ But in making do and muddling through \ When you've nowhere else to go.

Finally, listen for the drums; they're especially well done.

The Way I Tend To Be
by Frank Turner

Some mornings I pray for evening
For the day to be done
And some summer days I hide away
And wait for rain to come
‘Cause it turns out hell will not be found
Within the fires below
But in making do and muddling through
When you've nowhere else to go

But then I remember you
And the way you shine like truth in all you do
And if you remembered me
You could save me from the way I tend to be
The way I tend to be

Some days I wake up dazed, my dear
And don't know where I am
I've been running now so long I'm scared
I've forgotten how to stand
And I stand alone in airport bars
And gather thoughts to think
That if all I had was one long road
It could drive a man to drink

But then I remember you
And the way you shine like truth in all you do
And if you remembered me
You could save me from the way I tend to be
The way I tend to be

‘Cause I've said, "I love you," so many times
That the words kind of died in my mouth
And I meant it each time with each beautiful woman
But somehow it never works out
But you stood apart in my calloused heart
And you taught me and here's what I learned
That love is about all the changes you make
And not just three small words

And then I catch myself
Catching your scent on someone else
In a crowded space
And it takes me somewhere I cannot quite place

But then I remember you
And the way you shine like truth in all you do
And if you remembered me
You could save me from the way I tend to be
The way I tend to be

WW: Beach fudo ring

(Latest addition to my fudo-making stocks. I will cut this large, well-rusted washer off the bolt with an angle grinder.)

Starfish Correction

Will the real Pisaster brevispinus please stand up?

Looking again at the photo I published at the top of last week's post, purporting to be of an adult giant pink starfish (Pisaster brevispinus), I've come to the conclusion that it's actually just an unusually large leather star (Dermasterias imbricata). Among other things, it doesn't seem to have any brevispini (short spines).

Sigh.

Oh, well. I hold out hope that this favourite of mine, which was always more numerous in deep water than intertidally, is still down there, outbreeding the plague.

(Photo courtesy of D. Gordon E. Robertson and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Oystercatchers

(Haematopus bachmani.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Good News on the Starfish Front

Not Pisaster brevispinus, unfortunately.

(Update, 15 September 2021: my report of a mature Pisaster brevispinus in this survey was sadly premature. See correction.)

So after a down year due to COVID lockdown, I got in not one but three Annual Puget Sound Asteroid surveys this year. And the news is brilliant!

The first took place at a bay on the Canada-US Border, where two old friends and I have searched for hardy echinoderms since the arrival of the climate disruption-related sea star wasting disease (SSWD) about ten years ago. There we'd previously noted a small but tenacious community of Pisaster ochraceus, the once-ubiquitous ochre star that had seemingly disappeared from all points south, both pelagic and thalassic.

But now they've gone bananas. As we probed crevices and rocky groins in the lower tidal zone, we found seam after seam stuffed with adult P. ochraceus, in numbers reminiscent of the pre-plague days.

Nor was that all. A subsequent hike along Bellingham Bay, a few miles south, fetched up many more, lying around in jaded profusion as if they owned the place.

With unrestrained delight we documented this turn of events in a wealth of celebratory photos.

Pisaster ochraceus.

And this is not, I soon learned, an isolated case. Another visit to the other beach I've been monitoring, near the southern extreme of the Sound 150 miles distant, produced not only several healthy adult Evasterias troscheli, where before I'd only found juveniles, but also an able-bodied adult P. ochraceus, luxuriating the warm plague-friendly austral shallows. And best of all, the first appearance of a robust Pisaster brevispinus!

That last was truly exciting, owing to the long relationship I've had with the North Pacific giant pink sea star. When I was three years old, my uncle and a neighbour girl – young adults both, and divers – disappeared below the inlet in front of my grandmother's house and resurfaced with a great glistening pale monstrosity. They propped it up, tall as I was, on the beach in front of me, and I watched its rows of tube feet wave in phlegmatic bewilderment at the sudden change of world.

This lasted all of five minutes, after which they returned the perplexed fellow to the saltchuck, but the moment remains sharp in memory, now six decades gone.

A few years later I rowed the same bay, hip pressed against the port gunwale, head craned over the rail to peruse the creatures on the bottom. The further out I rowed, the fewer I could discern, until at last only great green bands of sea lettuce were visible in the depths, alternating with bare grey sand.

And then nothing.

Except… here and there, the ghostly undulating skeletal hands of yard-wide P. brevispinus, glowing up through 100 feet of green water.

So the disappearance of my old friend truly hurt, and I fairly cried when I found this one.

Evasterias troschelii.

As it happens, I'm not the only observer of this uptick. As early as 2018, a grad student at UC Merced noted genetic variances in local P. ochraceus populations that allowed a durable nucleus to survive after the great majority had perished. At the time her department wondered aloud whether a similar evolutionary reserve might bail out other species as well.

And so it seems. The single blue note here is the continued absence of great sunflower of death Pycnopodia helianthoides, the final Puget Sound regular still absent. (Though I didn't survey for Leptasterias hexactis, the tiny six-rayed star that lives under rocks, so can't comment on its status.) Marine biologists have suggested that Pycnopodia – soft, squishy, easily penetrated and dissolved by SSWD – may be extinct in our waters.

But I hold out hope that a breeding population, sheltered in colder, deeper fathoms, will one day repopulate its ancestors' old range.

SSWD-resistant Dermasterias imbricata, still very present in the South Sound, as it's been since the beginning.

WW: Onset of autumn

(Acer rubrum)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

WW: Christmas in August

(Deck the halls with black monastic laundry. Same shrub you saw last December.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.