Magdalena Bay, Baja California Sur
The ocean, the sand and the mangroves are a triad intimately tied and yet upon the surface there seems to be no commonality. We could group them all together simply by virtue of our day which started on the oceans deep and led us to the sand. It finally found us floating among the mangrove roots. But there is more in this relationship than meets the undiscerning eye.
Fog swallowed the land as we motored north in the Pacific against the swelling sea. Somehow the sun managed to find a void in this curtain of white, rising in the shape of a strange space ship, a hemisphere of overlapping layered bands ranging from gold to red. Beneath the flat circumference, pink light radiated outward until it met the navy sea. Disappearing again it found its way above the coverlet of clouds to shine upon the spray cascading from common dolphin backs as they leapt in front of the bow. The wind snatched the glistening globules and patterns formed like reflections from a thousand diamonds. Shearwaters and gulls milled at the entrance, La Entrada, our escape from the ocean’s rhythmic rise and fall. Fishing boats too were present, telling of the plethora of life riding on the tides.
Wind bounced grains of sand up the sloping sides of dunes and cast them adrift over cliff-like edges. They tumbled, collecting on the ever steepening facade. Does a slip-face slip if no one is there to help it fall? Apparently so, for in cross section each dune shows distinctive parallel bands indicating gravity’s pull and the miniscule pace of forward motion. When launched from the edge we too felt this force and a river of solid sand flowed with us as if it were a viscous fluid. Embraced by the roots of halophytes some dunes remained imprisoned, locked in rounded mounds but most of the island was in motion moving ever south. Beyond our view the sands swallowed and smothered the mangroves, re-contouring the island’s edges and re-arranging the channels.
Protected by dunes to the west, narrow channels lead from the bay, each dressed in dense verdant foliage. Camouflaged among the tip-toed roots of red mangroves a green heron stealthily stalked, lifting each foot slowly and deliberately to position itself above a school of tiny fish. Within these tangled roots and the stubby knuckled knees of white mangrove a nursery exists where fish and shellfish hide until graduation day. Big enough then to venture forth to the bay nearby or to the deep, they restock the ocean’s store. We meandered through the channels where shorebirds probed in exposed and muddy flats looking for invertebrates housed in this habitat.
The ocean nourished by the mangroves crashes against the western shore of Isla Magdalena, an island of mountains and shifting sands. It was here we spent our day.
The ocean, the sand and the mangroves are a triad intimately tied and yet upon the surface there seems to be no commonality. We could group them all together simply by virtue of our day which started on the oceans deep and led us to the sand. It finally found us floating among the mangrove roots. But there is more in this relationship than meets the undiscerning eye.
Fog swallowed the land as we motored north in the Pacific against the swelling sea. Somehow the sun managed to find a void in this curtain of white, rising in the shape of a strange space ship, a hemisphere of overlapping layered bands ranging from gold to red. Beneath the flat circumference, pink light radiated outward until it met the navy sea. Disappearing again it found its way above the coverlet of clouds to shine upon the spray cascading from common dolphin backs as they leapt in front of the bow. The wind snatched the glistening globules and patterns formed like reflections from a thousand diamonds. Shearwaters and gulls milled at the entrance, La Entrada, our escape from the ocean’s rhythmic rise and fall. Fishing boats too were present, telling of the plethora of life riding on the tides.
Wind bounced grains of sand up the sloping sides of dunes and cast them adrift over cliff-like edges. They tumbled, collecting on the ever steepening facade. Does a slip-face slip if no one is there to help it fall? Apparently so, for in cross section each dune shows distinctive parallel bands indicating gravity’s pull and the miniscule pace of forward motion. When launched from the edge we too felt this force and a river of solid sand flowed with us as if it were a viscous fluid. Embraced by the roots of halophytes some dunes remained imprisoned, locked in rounded mounds but most of the island was in motion moving ever south. Beyond our view the sands swallowed and smothered the mangroves, re-contouring the island’s edges and re-arranging the channels.
Protected by dunes to the west, narrow channels lead from the bay, each dressed in dense verdant foliage. Camouflaged among the tip-toed roots of red mangroves a green heron stealthily stalked, lifting each foot slowly and deliberately to position itself above a school of tiny fish. Within these tangled roots and the stubby knuckled knees of white mangrove a nursery exists where fish and shellfish hide until graduation day. Big enough then to venture forth to the bay nearby or to the deep, they restock the ocean’s store. We meandered through the channels where shorebirds probed in exposed and muddy flats looking for invertebrates housed in this habitat.
The ocean nourished by the mangroves crashes against the western shore of Isla Magdalena, an island of mountains and shifting sands. It was here we spent our day.
