Coast Walk 1 Still Life

Coast Walk 1: January 1, 2015, The Bar to the Town Beach, Bar Harbor, Maine

The first still life of the Coast Walk – why did it take 3 months to pull together? Mostly because of the eider skull in the 2nd row from the left. It looked like this when I found it on New Year’s Day:

and it took a long time to clean the smelly parts off without damaging the delicate bones. (This might be a good time to thank my family for accepting the skull-in-a-jar that has been macerating above the sink for most of the winter. Thank you, family.) The spine in the second row from the right came from the same bird. There might have been more of the skeleton buried in the seaweed, but the pile was frozen solid and these were all I could pull free. Also thank you to Jane Disney, one of my walkers that day, who found the moon snail shell while I was listening to George Neptune’s stories about the Wabanaki encampments!

So what are we looking at? From left to right, top to bottom:

1. sea glass, die-cast toy truck, sea glass, Common Periwinkle (Littorina littorea), Razor Clam (Ensis directus)

2. ceramic electrical fixture, granite beach stone, porcelain shard, Common Eider skull (Somateria mollissima), ceramic spark plug, Soft-shelled Clam (Mya arenaria)

3. more periwinkles, Northern Rock Barnacle clump (Semibalanus balanoides), two Dog Whelks (Nucella lapillus), driftwood, more periwinkles

4. seaweed – I’m not so good with marine algae, but I think it’s Rockweed (Fucus distichus), sea glass, Green Crab (Carcinus maenas), sea glass, bird leg bone

5. more sea glass, Common Eider spine, aluminum soda can tab, Blue Mussel (Mytilus edulis), fabric flower, copper doohickey (maybe part of a hose)

6. Moon snail (Lunatia heros), more periwinkles, styrofoam packing peanut, another Blue Mussel, plastic spoon, lobster-claw band, plastic earpiece from sunglasses, sea glass, and an oyster shell (the shape looks like Ostrea edulis, a.k.a. the European flat oyster, which means it was most likely farmed, not wild)