I’ve been spending a few days at my relatives’ beach house in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina– a place I call “West Virginia’s coast,” simply because so many people from West Virginia come here on holidays.
Now, I am far from the typical beachgoer.
I don’t like spending hours sitting in the sun. I’m very fair-skinned, and I have to put on very high-powered sunscreen. And I actually don’t like swimming in salt water.
But I am a nature nut.
And I love to go on long nature walks.
Here, I have to walk three or four miles before I get beyond all the resorts and into the open beach, where I can see all sorts of little shore birds. I have yet to see any dolphins or porpoises here, but I know that if I’m going to see any of those, it will be away from the crowded beaches. That’s why I’m willing to take such long journeys away from the beach house.
I did, however, see something quite amazing this week.
On the Outer Banks of North Carolina, I have seen many dolphins and porpoises, and from the shore, I’ve seen a few blacktip sharks and bonnetheads. I certainly wasn’t expecting to see those animals. The female sharks whelp just off the coast where I used visit in North Carolonia, and in June, the fishermen would catch scores of young blacktips and bonnetheads from the shore.
But I’ve never seen anything like that here.
But as I was walking along, I noticed a brown triangle poking above the foamy wayes. As I walked closer, a distinctive shark tail appeared behind the triangle. I knew instantly what I was observing. It was a sandbar shark. it was only about 3 or 4 feet long, and it was probably chasing small bait fish that it had chased into the surf.
What amazed me was the shark was only about ten feet from the beach in about 18 inches of frothing water.
Now, I’ve always been fascinated by sharks. My grandparents took me to the beach when I was about two, and according to my grandpa, he took me on a beach combing expedition, when we came across a ghastly sight. A large hammerhead, which could have been a bonnethead, had been caught by a fisherman. It had been fileted, and the rest of its body was left to lie there on the beach. According to him, I was so fascinated by the creature that he knew that the next thing to do was to take me to the local aquarium. And so fascinated was I by all the fish at the aquarium that he had to take me three times a day on that particular vacation.
To see that sandbar shark rise from the surf took me back to that time. I long for that childlike sense of wonder, back when I was a fully subjective human being without all of this rationality to cloud my thinking.
I saw the sandbar shark for only a few brief seconds. Then the waves crashed down upon it, and it swam back into the depths. But for a brief moment, I was a child again.
