lotsofplants

Most extended families, confronted with a midwinter holiday, like to engage in family activities. Sledding. Making cookies. Caroling. Big dinners followed by games.

My family decided to go dig razor clams.

Now, razor clams are tasty, and they're just challenging enough to make the hunt fun, and my family is a nifty one which works together well. But it would be nice if the sun stayed up until *after* the tide turned.

Mental notes for next time:
- Don't let cousin Mike use a shovel. He broke two of them beyond repair, and finally was reduced to digging with his hands. Unfortunately, letting him use the tube resulted in a lot of halved clams.
- Clams dig through wet sand faster than humans without tools.
- Despite never having done so before, my brother-in-law proved to be the best digger of all of us.
- Knee-high boots are great for keeping your feet dry until you're in surf up to midthigh. Having your own private ocean is not really that fun. Also, no sooner do you get most of it drained and the remainder heated than there's another high wave.
- Being the light-and-bag holder is a better way to stay dry. Nothing quite like being up to your elbow in a sandy hole, clam almost within your grasp, and looking over your shoulder at a wave coming in higher than you are.

But the sky was beautifully clear, the milky way blazing across the heavens, the tiny stars as visible as the great ones seen dimly from the city. Flocks of sandpipers almost skimming the waves as they flew by against the sunset, long strands of birds whooshing by at chest level. Tiny fish that unburied themselves from the sand as the light faded, startled by our flashlights and lanterns into a rapid reburial, gone as if they'd never existed. A crab accidently dug up, waving its legs angrily as it scuttled back down into the water. A long white centipede-like creature uncurling from a pile of shoveled sand, confused by the sudden transition to air. Turning to look down the dark beach, the last shreds of twilight surely and absolutely gone, and seeing a long chain of fairy lights, lanterns moving and swinging in their holders' hands. The gentle purr of the waves cresting and reaching and retracting across the sandbar and swooshing around our feet. The graceful curves and colors of the inside of the shells, steamed open and off so that the clams could be cleaned, and the clean smell of the clams themselves. Family banter and stories while cleaning the seventy-odd clams, then divving them up to be taken home and fried or baked or frozen.

Home late, glad on the long ride for the extra dry clothes, watching the fog-blurred headlights though blinking sleepy eyes.