SHELL SHOCKED

Stay away from the beaches on the west coast of Florida.

We tried a few last week and they were no fun. Someone has piled trillions of seashells all along the shores. No one swims or stares longingly at the sea. Everyone we saw was bent over, trudging along, looking for the perfect shell.

It looked like a holiday for hunchbacks but when we examined the exoskeletons ourselves, we caught the disease. The two of us started moving slowly. As we did we scanned the ground ignoring each other,

the spectacular sea and a perfect December day.

After walking a mile south on Manisota Key our pockets bulged with long dead mollusks. Finally a stench of rotting fish broke the spell. I began photographing what the Red Tide had killed and noticed again the endless line of shell searchers.

I asked Francesca if she wouldn't mind a few fish skeletons in our back yard. She reminded me of the bone pile I already had, the fading pieces of future projects that will probably never be.

As I admitted her point I noticed the Gulf of Mexico behind her. We remembered why we were there and jumped into it.