Blog birth - Tidepool Tim - Winter clamming

Hello there -

This is my first attempt at a blog. I've heard about them and read a few to date.  Feels a little weird writing, but for a guy who has kept umpteen journals over the years and written a column for a teeny little paper - I'm sure I will get up to speed fast.

January cold!   Tucker and I headed to Kelly Point yesterday at dusk to see if we could scare up a feed of clams. Temps were in the single digits, but the snow had stopped and we thought that the flats would still be diggable.  Had to snowplow our way down the road as the drifts were massive in some places.  We did manage to blast our way through and right to the high tide mark.   The flats were white with snow towards the upper intertidal but we could see that further down the mud still held the oceans relative warmth and that the snow had been melting there - a good sign!

We raced down the embankment with diggers and hod in hand.  We were in the lee of the wind and felt like we would have enough light before dusk to perhaps get 1/2 peck or so for the family feed.   The mud felt ' cake-like' to our rubber boots  it is a weird sensation to walk on this stuff.  The mud is frozen on the top and goopy underneath.  So long as you keep moving you won't break through. Farther down we hit sandy beach that was frozen solid - it doesn't hold the water and the warmth as well....  

We took note of the many small mounds or  'volcanoes' as we call them.  These are from the castings of the lugworms who are huddled below the cold in their u-shaped burrows.  In the spring there will be some digging there to do.    Some Black ducks exploded from the water near the ledges at low water - there were several groups all taking flight out and over the river bay.  They usually kept to more open water area but must have been hiding from the wind as we were.   We scurried along towards low water until we started to see the clam holes in the mud marking the siphons.   There were lots of tiny holes and very few large ones but we picked our spots and went to work.

"Got a nice one" and "aw nuts - broke him" were all I heard from Tuck as I managed to pull 4 small clams from the sand.  I crushed the largest one with my digger.  By that time my rubber gloved hands were already aching from the cold.  The wind had picked up as we had moved far out on the point and well beyond the shelter of the land and trees.  

"How you doing?" I asked. "Just two small ones so far" he replied.   "I'm cold"!   We stumbled around for a few more minutes enough to notice how fast the liquid mud was freezing to our boots.  Enough said - we bolted up the beach back to the truck.

So much for our January tidewalk.  We had hoped to go looking for scaleworms after clamming but that obviously was not going to happen today. The full moon had offered us huge tides, but it was just too cold to be out on the beach.  We chugged home and dropped the plow in the drive on the way back in.  No clams for dinner this time - but it was neat to be out for a try!