Letter from just beneath the surface of coast of Maine
Posted by Billy Shore on Monday, August 24, 2009
Few stretches of land are in such constant flux as the slice of Maine coast beyond our window at Goose Rocks Beach. The area between high and low tide, vast where we live is called the intertidal. Every twelve hours incoming tide re-shapes and re-makes the beach depositing shells, snails, driftwood, and an occasional lobster trap. With the tides about 50 minutes later each day than the day before, and the sun in a different spot in the sky, the effect is of an exquisitely sensitive kaleidoscope offering a unique view each time one returns to it.
Beyond the intertidal lies the subtidal, the stretch of ocean floor always submerged, though just barely during low tide. Ankle deep far from shore, it is rich in both life and drama if one’s willing to look for it. Rosemary, Nate and I always take guests out to search for everything from the prized wafer thin sand dollars and hermit crabs to the large coiled moon snails whose domes are barely visible above the sand.
If you brush away the sand around a moon snail you find that it has anchored itself to the ocean floor with a large purplish squishy suction cup-like foot that extends from the open end of the shell and can be pulled back in. If you dig it up you will often find that this rubbery foot has completely enveloped a large clam upon which is it feeding. The snail secretes an enzyme to soften the clam shell, and uses its razor like tongue to drill a hole in the shell through which it can digest the clam.
Such struggles for survival can be found under almost every inch of ocean floor, and a few hundred yards out where lobsters, crabs, eels, and sea stars scramble in their own way to survive. This is nature at its most remarkably routine and we feel blessed to able to learn from and enjoy the beauty of it in all of its forms.
Just as struggles of the subtidal are hidden from view unless we go looking, so are other struggles in Maine that remain below the surface. But there is nothing natural about them. One in five Maine children lives in households facing hunger. Only 44 percent of children in Maine receive the free school breakfast for which they are eligible and only 15.5% get summer meals when schools are closed. Between 2000 and 2005 Maine had the highest percentage growth rate of hungry people in the U.S. More than one in eight Mainers uses food stamps. A state known for catering to tourists in search of simple pleasures like sailing, kayaking, hiking and camping is permanent home to many for whom pleasure has become a distant dream.
Maine of course is not alone. A record 34 million Americans are now on food stamps. Understanding the challenges they face depends on our willingness to dig beneath the surface. Thanks to the recession we need not dig as deeply as we once did. But all social change begins with a commitment to scratch away the veneer of comfort and complacency and stare unblinkingly at hard truths.
Just as nature manages to camouflage its harsh realities, so too does our culture of journalism as entertainment, celebrity trials and deaths, political scorekeeping, and obsession with the latest fads from fashion to technology.
That’s why bearing witness remains such an indispensible ingredient of our work. Whether on the beach or on the front line of the fight against hunger, there is wisdom in the words of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, who wrote, in another context, that “What is essential is invisible to the eye.”
August 24, 2009 | | Tags: food stamps, hunger, maine, school breakfast, school lunch, snap, summer meals
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