Gifts from the Sea

Reaching the tip of Boca Grande, I stood and stared at the churning waters of Charlotte Harbor. Purple and blue gathered in angry skeins, the waves billowed in the space between this spit of sand and Cayo Costa. Tiny lagoons formed from the harbor’s overflow across the beach, leaving strips of sand and shells to buffer the shoreline.

Rounding the corner, I walked into the wind. At the base of the sea oats lay beds of shells strewn by the storms, slivers of texture amid the sand. Stooping, I saw the iridescent glimmer of pen shells, and a wave of memory washed over me. I was seven again, combing the beach behind the Anchor Inn on Sanibel Island, where pen shells lay scattered thickly like leaves on the shore. It made me wonder where they’d disappeared all these years.

Feeling the fervor of shelling, a pursuit that slipped away from me years ago, I examined the shell beds more closely. There were murex and conch shells, whelks and tulips. More names bubbled up from the past: jingle shell, turkey-wing, olive shell, jack knife clam. In just a few feet of searching, I found dozens of uncommon gifts from the sea, a bounty of shells unparalleled since my childhood. I looked to the distant horizon, feeling the connection with my young self, my travels past, and a sea that shares its bounty in the stormiest weather.