There goes Marko. He shouts to Sam from 30 yards away. "Come help us dislodge this crab!" Marko has never seen tide pools. He sees them with virgin vision, he hears, smells, tastes the salt and surf. Earlier that day he referred to them as "beach puddles." Beach puddles! He is the king of his new ocean-front domain, roaming with the seagulls and sea urchins. He rules with an iron fist until his Nike's slip into an unseen pool. The score: mother nature-1, Marko-0.
Where's Kyle? He's saving the planet. One piece of trash at a time. The other's scour the place for sea creatures while Kyle takes matters into his own hands. First its an abandoned balloon (or shall I say dolphin killer), next its an old shoe, and before the day is over his arms are teeming with trash. "Hey, careful with your bare feet," cautions a leader. He acknowledges, but little do they know he is a seasoned veteran. He's waded through more tide pools than a rogue seagull looking for lunch.
Isabelle has found Nature's sense of humor. Left, right, to and fro she hops, searching for the elusive "clam squirt." Elise and Keely have found it already, but poor Isabelle has had no such luck. The clams, she feels, have let her down. All of a sudden she takes the perfect step, pressure is applied in the right location and..."There it was!" she exclaims. A small jet of water expelled from a tiny hole in the mud. She has found what she came looking for, the answer to her prayers. The clam doesn't know that it made her day.
Michael is an interesting chap. "A little to the left...no MY left," he negotiates with the subjects of his photo. "Ah, that was the one." He watches the water-world through the lens of his Nikon DSLR. He admires both the big and the small, snapping pictures of ocean vistas and hermit crabs. He meanders along the shore, his signature blue hat somehow managing to constrain boisterous bushels of brown hair. He captures smiles, he captures fun, and he shares it right back with us all.
Maverick doesn't quite know what he's hunting for, but he's hunting it. His snout is experiencing sensory overload disorder at the moment, catching whiffs of countless other canines. But he's on to something and he knows it. His owner has been left in the dust, calling out for him as he tromps over snails and clam holes. Perhaps it's the scent of fish he most covets, or it might be that tennis ball he spots bouncing over to the left. "Hey, maybe I'll go say hi to that big mob of students," he muses. A dog is always eager. A dog is always earnest.
The students make their way back to the cars under a darkening sky. They yearn for dinner (a burger or soup) and settle in for the ride back to Santa Clara. A marvelous marine world filled with anemones, urchins, crabs, snails, fish, worms, and slugs lingers in their thoughts, but not in their appetites. The pools have been conquered. The tides have turned.
Stay Wild!