Last weekend we were at our cabin on Keats Island and I came away with two pictures I wanted to write about. To write cheery stuff actually, a rare pleasure in these dark days. Both have a story but this one’s simple.

It’s just an ordinary evergreen tree, not very tall, nothing special about it. But it’s spring! So at the end of each branch there’s a space where the needles are new and shout their youth in light green, a fragile color as compared to the soberly rich shade of the middle-aged needles further up the branch. Probably a metaphor for something complicated but I just see a tree getting on with the springtime business of tree-ness. Good on it.

Now a longer story. What happened was, we had an extra-low tide. Tide is a big deal, we get 17 vertical feet at the extremes which can cause problems for boats and docks and if you happen to arrive with several days worth of supplies at low tide well it sucks to be you, because you’re gonna be toting everything up that much further.

But I digress.

I went for a walk at low tide because you see things that are usually mostly hidden. For example these starfish, also known as sea stars or even “asteroids”. No, really, check that link.

These are Pisaster ochraceus, distinguished by that pleasing violet color. Have a close look. They’re intertidal creatures hiding from the unaccustomed light and air. The important thing is that they’re more or less whole, which is to say free of wasting disease, of which there’s been a major epizootic in recent years. The disease isn’t subtle, it makes their arms melt away into purple goo; extremely gross.

Plus, ecologies being what they are, there are downstream effects. Sea stars predate on sea urchins only recently they haven’t been because wasting disease. It turns out that sea urchins predate on baby shrimp trying to grow up in the weeds on the ocean floor. Fewer stars, more urchins, less prawns. Which means that the commercial prawn-fishers have been coming up empty and going out of business.

Anyhow, seeing a cluster of disease-free stars is nice, whether you’re in the seafood business or you just like the stars for their own sake, as I do.

And light-green needles too. And spring. Enjoy it while you can.