The night before I had a restless night, dreaming of zombies and the end of the world and such. What better antidote to nightmares than walking for hours along a deserted beach on a very autumnal, sunny morning in Tasmania?

I've been to Marion Bay a number of times over the last ten years but I've never walked along the entire beach. Turns out it's quite the walk - some three hours from the carpark to the other end. It was beautiful enough to persist, however, both shoreline, sky, and the distant views of coastline. What struck me was how alive it all was - though most of the millions of shells were empty, some were full of sea creatures, just waiting to be picked off by birds who soared quite close to me as if curious.

Out to sea, fishing boats drifted on by to safe harbour in Boomer Bay, the next bay around from here. The end of the beach seemed as if it would never come, and the bones in my feet were hurting, as they have been for a while. I've been doing exercises to sort it out and had to stop every now and then to stretch. But sometimes the best way to fix stuff is jsut to push through.

There were hundreds of little unicorn horn shells. I don't know where the unicorns were. Perhaps they grew new horns once they grew out of the old ones.

I found many mermaid bikinis. They come in all shapes and sizes and colours. I kept thinking of mermaids with only one shell on one breast, the other naked, looking around for a match. Yep, I was going delirious.

There were clusters of oysters that must have broken off and floated from the oyster farm in Boomer Bay, where they sell them. Tassie oysters are some of the biggest and freshest in the world because of the clean waters, or so they say.

So many shells had clearly only just lost their creature - honestly there were so many scallop shells as if they were just plucked clean of meat. They were like little sun umbrellas for tiny mermaids to sit and shade themselves.

Where there is sealife, sadly, there is also sea death - a seal had washed up on shore and was rotting away. There was no smell, only seaweed and sand, and likely fungi.

Finally I reached the end, and collapsed in a heap. I really wished I'd brought water and chocolate! I had drunk a big litre that morning so I think that definitely saved me. I lay there enjoying the view and the peace and quiet for some time, stretching out the ache in my back from sleeping funny during my zombie apocalypse nightmare night.

Eventually I got up to walk back but thought I'd just check around the rocks and see what came next. Turns out there was a gorgeous little tiny cove of a beach. There was no access track that I could see and it was surrounded by gum trees. There must have been a fenceline that ran down to the rocks and someone had taken the time to build a kind of sculpture out of the fenceposts and fill it with rocks. The contrast of the bleached wood against the blue sky really appealed to me.

On the way back I had to listen to a podcast to take my mind off my sore feet. I've been listening to Melvin Sheldrake's Entangled Life, about how fungi are basically entangled with everything. Even the seaweed had fungi on it keeping it from drying out. The tree roots on the shore had fungi in them. Everything was in symbiosis with some other kind of life, everything entangled, nothing alone. Here I was entangled with it all. It felt good and right, even though I was also feeling pain.

I couldn't believe how beautiful and clear the water was around the rocks where the mussels clung. It was so warm I had to strip clean off, and swim naked like a mermaid in the cool water. Perhaps I'd now dream of mermaids, not zombies.

With Love,

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