The other day I had to get out of my house, sit on my deck, and simply observe what has always been my favorite time of year. I noticed a neighbor a few houses down staring into nothing probably hoping for some normality to come back. He then picked up something that must have been valuable to him because he just stared at it for a couple of minutes. He then dropped it back and walked into his home.
During normal times it is not uncommon to see many different types of people wandering up and down our beaches in search of some sort of curiosity. We are all still hunkering down to survive these difficult times. These could include skeletons of various sea creatures, lost jewelry of some more unfortunate vacationers; colorful seaweeds attached to rocks, or of course seashells. Sometimes people wander up and down the beaches looking for nothing more important than themselves.
Fabiano:A walk on Long Sands Beach in the fogs of Maine
For the past few summers, I’ve observed a particular man not quite lost in the crowd of treasure seekers. He is a rather large man with a graying beard and a slight gimp. Every weekend day for as long as most who visit the beach can remember he is seen walking along the beach with a cane in one hand and a large canvas sack in the other. Most people ignore him because they assume he is one of the many investigators of the sea hoping to find something truly remarkable. Unlike the shell man, all of the others disappear as soon as the warm breezes of days turn into the cool sea winds of evening.
As the evening approaches, the shell man is seen as soon as the tide reaches its lowest point. He walks along the beach in search of maybe the perfect shell. Every now and then he stops to stare into the open sea possibly reminiscing about times of his past or maybe contemplating nothing more important than himself. From afar his silhouette creates an image of perfection with the skies and seas becoming one, torn in half by the foaming waves and sometimes violent water.
The air around him explodes with sparks of illuminated mist and the always cool wind forces him to squint into what has always been and will always be as long as life is allowed to exist on this planet. If we allow it to exist. He sometimes looks like a lighthouse defiantly daring the powers of the ocean to turn him back or even pull him down. Nothing else seems to exist. Nothing else dares to because it is a time when the curiosity of man, the beauty of the ocean, and the violence the sea displaces co-exist.
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Thinking back to the many times I watched him I can never remember if he ever reached down into the water to collect his shells. My observations always send my own dreams into perspective. The day-to-day reality of life seems so insignificant when compared to such commitment. The strength of nature as reflected by the shell man’s perseverance to task also inspires a sense that anything is possible, even achievable. He always returns from his journey with a full bag in one hand and his wooden cane in the other. Purposely passing near him I see that behind his graying beard is an aura of success that he has completed what he set out to do.
The only thing that remains after he leaves the darkened beach is the stark gray tone that hangs in the air and over the ocean. It is a color that has never been successfully reproduced.
Like the sunset over the volcanoes of Hawaii or the blinding white of a snowstorm in the Mount Washington Valley, the gray of a deserted beach registers directly on the mind as a feeling rather than a visual stimulus.
In conversations with others about the shell man, some say his collecting of shells is compulsive behavior. Others say that the behavior is just an aging man’s means to find some importance in life. I believe that this man has found his niche in life that makes him enjoy his position of being called the shell man.
Jim Fabiano is a retired teacher and writer living in York, Maine. You can contact Jim at: james.fabiano60@gmail.com.