Warren Beach Walks

Here on my second to last day in Rhode Island, Arlo and I went on an exuberant, damp stroll. We tromped through muck and puddles on the beach paths through the marsh and out to the beach.

There was a Great Blue Heron, soaring over us in simultaneously graceful and awkward flight. It was like a big, blue, feathered dinosaur, all angles and lavender-pewter colored in the gray sky. The poison ivy, rampant and threatening all summer, has turned a solid dark satin purple, and stands out plainly in the reeds. A murder of crows landed on a dead tree next to us, and began chattering, in their clattering and mechanical way. Their voices carried over the marsh, sounding like bicycles constantly in the midst of changing gears. There was a bleached crab shell, and there were whelks filled with barnacles. There was a very small pile of small gray feathers where some small bird had met it's fate.