The journey back takes us up to the peak of the island once more, and through the small but lush jungle that lies there. The sky has turned more threatening, and the waves are beginning to bring the sea back, each one leaving more of itself behind than the last. The water begins to eat the sand again, the beach disappearing. Time and waves are not on our side.
Coming down off of the island, we discover a new kind of creature has taken up residence on the sands of the beaches.
At first, there were only a few of them. The creatures crawled on two hind legs, bent to the extreme; knees nearly in their own faces, claws in the sand, then locked near their chests like small t-rexes with scoliosis. They were hunting with slow but ferocious intent, searching for the morsels that would feed them.
Some moved in lines, working together. Others worked alone, cultivating large rings with their bodies at the center creating crop circles in the sand. Some searched at the foot of the waves, being pushed higher and higher up the beach with each passing minute. The time allowed for the hunt was limited by the sea, and they worked fast.
There seemed to be an allowable distance between groups of scratchers: a few meters for those familiar with one another, and ten meters from one group to another. The solitary scratchers have the most space given them. They have the most intensely curved backs, they have been doing this their whole lives, and are avoided by the larger groups. There is safety in numbers, but an unpredictability that oozes out of an older woman, working alone on the beach, her body changed to the task that she has practiced daily for decades. She can see the clams through the sand, she knows where they are and her bucket is full. She has a territoriality that says that these clams that she can see through the sand, they are hers. They will be in her bucket. Keep your distance. Her teeth are sharp.
They remain in moisture, the rain is common on the beach and as we wander through the gathered scratchers it becomes inevitable. The sand is wet, clinging to their hands as they search around in it. Even rubber boots do not keep all of the sea out, and as the tide encroaches the waves lose predictability. I am happy with my bare feet, as the water flows off as easily as it reaches them. But not every October day is this warm, and the scratchers are prepared for the worst.
This temporary landscape is the only type of place a person can be a scratcher. The hunt for the nearly immobile clams requires attention to the tides. It is not 3 pm every day, it is twice a day, when the tides are low. And some weeks the tides are not low enough to give enough time for the hunt. The scratchers know all about this, and come when the tides allow it. The clams they search for come out when the water comes back and live by filtering the water. The quick movement of the water here, forward and back with the tides, provides the organic matter (dead algae and bits of decayed fish) that they feed on when they open their jaws, swaying in the underwater currents.
When the water recedes, the clams move underground. If they did not, all sorts of birds and mammals would simply pick them up and crush them and eat them. Evolution does not allow for such stupidity. They move back under the sand, but not too far. Too deep, and the sand becomes too compact, oxygen may not reach at the right concentrations and it is too difficult to come back out when the food is available. They have found the balance, over millions of years of trial and error, of where they need to be to be safe, and to find food, and survive.
The scratchers have merely figured out the clam's weakness. They use garden tools, rakes and hoes, and sometimes bare hands; they dig 20 centimeters down, and move on. Occasionally this overturns a clam, which is placed in the bucket. If there are no clams to find, or if one has a preference for oysters, oysters can be pried off of the rocks in the area as well. Or, as we saw several scratchers do on a quick break, one can simply open the oyster and suck it out of its shell while it is still attached to the rock.
I stole a group of oysters from its rock, grimy and stuck together in a bundle of six or so. The grit from the sand that they have glued together partially kept falling off, being rubbed off, an infinite source of grey sludge that stuck to my hand for the next two hours as we ventured back. It was further treasure to add to our bounty back at the house: we had ourselves harvested clams the day before. A different species, on the other side of the island. These we fooled into thinking the water had returned by stomping on the wet sand, making it soft, and the clams propel themselves out of the sand, where they can easily be picked up and placed in a bucket.
As we continued back towards the land, the grey sky began to fulfill its promise. There came a drizzle, and Marguax and Robin took out their raincoats. His was a bright orange, single use style see through plastic, one step away from a grocery bag. Hers was a more practical, but old and worn dark green raincoat. Fred and I thought that the rain wasn’t so bad, and we could handle it without our rain gear. Taking off my backpack with my hands full of grit from the oysters felt like a good way to get everything in my backpack covered with the stuff, so I decided against it.
We were on the seaside, however, and that means that the rain starts with ferocity. No sooner had we decided not to put on rain gear than the heavens opened. The tiny droplets blew nearly horizontal, cutting into our bare skin. The wind had come on as quickly as the rain. The water got in everywhere so quickly that now we were so wet that the rain gear would not matter any more. Robin was a bright orange flame, his raincoat flapping in the wind, creating a buzzing sound as it bounced between his body and the open air.
The rain continued berating us as we made our way to the rocky shores. Now we were amongst the stones at the bottom of the cliff, and we needed only to find our way up. The wind was so tough that we held our hands up to try to block the rain from pelting our faces. The sand and the stones cut into our feet as we walked, exfoliating them to the point of danger. The grouping of oysters in my hand was slowly washing out its grit, my body felt covered in sand, salt, and stones.
The roughness of the grit and the harshness of the pelting rain came to an abrupt end once we summited the cliffs. We found an old stairway, carved into the cliffs centuries ago, requiring hands and feet to work in unison to clamber up them. Once at the top, we entered a world of soft green grass, yellow flowers, and the sun crept out from behind a cloud. We all put our feet into the grass, washing away the grit of the seaside adventure, as a man collected the garbage cans from the edge of the road. He gave us a knowing nod to welcome us back to the civilization of Saint Jacut.
We made our way back to the house and fired up the stove: the clams from yesterday were ready to be eaten. They need time in clean water to rid themselves of the sand that they have eaten. As they exchange the water in their bodies with the clean water, they filter out all the sand so that they can be slurped in a garlic, butter, and white wine sauce, with parsley and served over noodles (al dente, ah?), without adding a sandy texture to the incredible meal.
The oysters and clams eaten, we went to bed. Tomorrow held the promise of another adventure.