Goodbye Rock, Paper, Scissors

Now I can say yes.

Since arriving in February I have been asked three or four times a week if there have been any big storms out here on the Point.  As of today I can answer in the affirmative.  A surging tide washed up along the walkway (pictured left) and even into the front yard on the harbor side.  Haley captured the 45 minutes or so of the biggest push.

This buzz began on Thursday night with as loud a wind as I can remember since the No Name/Perfect Storm of Halloween 1991.  Beating down the windows like a drumming octopus, the wind woke me up on Thursday with a relentless thumping.  It was as cool and as ominous as that moment in Jaws when the shark makes its first appearance.  Even with the wind however, there was no sign of any debris the next morning and you could still see from the windows.

Not this morning.  The cars were limed with salt and the windows are as cloudy as a shaken bottle of bleach.  I rinsed everything off this afternoon and came into the house only to find that my glasses, perched on the top of my head as usual, had been caught in the same spray in the time it took to spray the cars.  Most of the stuff in the yard that I thought might be threatened had been tucked away earlier in the week.  The couple of chairs that I had left out were blown over though and the wicker rocker we have in the yard must have done a pretty good dance to end up where it was.  The same kind of wind is expected tomorrow so maybe I will get a chance to watch another episode of The Rocking Chair Waltz.

Haley, her friend Kristen, and I went out after the tide and cleaned up - it didn't take long. The Highway Department came along and cleaned up the road so cars could pass safely.  There were people out checking out the waves though and when I saw one woman in her late sixties nearly break an ankles negotiating the walkway I had to do something about it.
That kind of thing sticks with me until I fix it. We got it back in shape but another high tide is coming again tomorrow so we tried to throw the big ones toward the house and the little ones toward the ocean.  Maybe tomorrow we'll only get the little ones back.

There is nothing like the power of the ocean. It rolls stones you could not pick up with a crane and tosses them with a grunt that female tennis players would envy. Five lobster traps are wrecked outside the window. Metal shredded by water and boulder and wind. Haley found a dollar in the debris which was in far better shape (all things considered) than the lobster traps. We are going to frame it as a momento.  Golf balls wacked out to sea rolled up into the yard along side what could be a four foot long fence post. It is just amazing to witness and study and ponder.

As kids we all mastered the game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. We had each gesture down and we knew the rules like we knew the sound of our mother's voice. No one ever had it explained to them; we all just knew it after one round of watching. We need to update it somehow. Somehow invent a new gesture. Something with both hands, both feet and a running start. Forget Rock, Paper, Scissors; Water trumps them all.