island adventures

I spent last night on Grape Island in Boston Harbor, where my sister is a park ranger.

She lives in a yurt.

This is bittersweet.

“Bittersweet limbo” she does with the kids who visit the island.

She lead me on a “wild edibles” tour. This is milkweed. Don’t eat it unless you drain the “milk” out.

Milkweed flowers.

This kids wandered over from his Outward Bound campsite and Ranger Val showed him some of the island’s treasures.

See urchin.

Lobster claw.

Bird egg on the dock.

Even though it was wet and freezing we continued on to do some tide-pooling.

Since it was a new moon Low Tide was the lowest it ever is.

We picked up this little periwinkle...

and hummed to him so he’d emerge.

It worked!

In fact, he loved my hand so much he either laid eggs or defecated on it.

A mussel freshly eaten by a sea gull.

Dead skate. In the shark family.

Val suggested that we cook up some of these mussels and clams for dinner. Until...

she reach into the water and found...

this. A group of mussels that she guesses is infected by the bacteria they call The Red Tide. Or something else equally gross.

So we lost our seafood appetites and cooked a can of beans.

Lowest of the low tide.

Dock at night, lit by the town of Weymouth.

Elliot is the island’s other ranger who lives in the yurt with Val.

Elliot snapped this one of us o’natural.

We also went kayaking and some other things that were either too wet or too fun to take pictures of. I might go back with my camera waterproofed so stay tuned.