It is low tide where the channel meets the shore. Warm, hazy air rises over the bare landscape into an empty, chalky-blue sky. But the wide-ribbed sands are run over lightly by gold braided waters, light catchers full of motion, flexing and rippling. Crustaceans dart through them. Periwinkle tracks straggle across the sands, and the empty shells of razor clams litter the surface, along with the worm cases stuck with shells, seaweed and grains of sand, protruding above it; and there are black horseshoe crabs partly dug in, waiting for the tide to turn. The three-toed tracks of shore birds are everywhere, and farther out, through a light wind, a rushing sea sound, I can hear gulls calling low, muttering among themselves, and the unmistakable harsh cry of a tern. Sanderlings, black-bellied plovers, ruddy turnstones, are dipping up and down, scuttling, or tripping ahead as they feed. In the distance the turnstones, mottled black and brown, with short red legs, look a little like quail. Two herring gulls are pulling hard at a sand shark, stranded by a tide, or perhaps killed by some fishing boat when it was brought up in the nets. They work at it furiously, tugging and tearing from both sides, since the sand shark’s hide is like sandpaper and many times as thick and tough. When I come up, I can see that they have not managed to do much more than tear out some of the flesh from its head and neck. Judging by the tracks on the sand, they must have been hauling it around for some time. Far far out, I thought I saw a man digging for clams on the flats, but after walking for half a mile in that direction, I am astonished to see a yearling deer starting in a leisurely way toward the land. It had probably browsed its way out, nibbling at bits of tender seaweed, licking salt, encountering no danger in the expansive room that borders land and sea. Now, with the motion of its long legs showing in all detail as I have never seen them in fields or woods, the deer starts to run slowly, with an almost loose loping. It stops, looks around uneasily, and then the legs unlimber again, but hesitantly. It looks suddenly in my direction; and bounds and bucks away, its legs now working with tense speed. Through my field glasses I find a man and a boy on the beach. Seeing them, the animal changes course, gathers more speed, and when it reaches the shore, dashes up the sloping beach and disappears into a green line of shrubs and low trees. [Illustration] The separations on these sand flats are vast. Where the narrow inland water course issues out, nothing is so well defined as space. For the variety of action here and in thousands of miles of deep water beyond, range is the rule, and the brook leads to the sea as all things lead to each other. Our meetings have scarcely begun. _June_ _The Garden_