Two little girls were playing in the water with their family, some distance away on the pebble beach. I wondered if these shoes were theirs.
After the lakefront, I went to a nearby grocery store.
The first thing I saw: sparkly blue shoes as one of the girls ran through the store. The girls were there, wearing these shoes!
Photographed May 12, 2022
These weren’t actually abandoned, but they look cute.
Photographed June 8, 2018
Here’s the clog of the Ancient Mariner, eight days later.
The dead bird is gone, or at least moved.
This particular beach has been exceptionally filthy this year. These two weeks that the clog was here were the filthiest days so far on the filthiest beach: densely strewn with plastic, dead birds, boat parts, and junk of every imagining.
This year I have felt very sad about the amount of plastic. From earlier in the year:
It makes me think about microplastic pollution. Plastic doesn’t disappear, it just breaks down into tinier pieces. The tiny pieces attract toxins and are eaten by birds and sea creatures. Even if we don’t eat these creatures, we drink this water.
Research is being done on the Great Lakes by the 5 Gyres Institute, an organization dedicated to eliminating plastic pollution in the oceans. Please support them.
Plastic debris photographed August 28, 2014
Clog photographed October 3, 2014
“God save thee, Ancient Mariner! from the fiends that plague thee thus!
Why lookst thou so?”“With my crossbow
I SHOT THE ALBATROSS!”
“I closed my lids, and kept them close,
And the balls like pulses beat;
For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky
Lay dead like a load on my weary eye,
And the dead were at my feet.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Photographed September 25, 2014
Shoes On The Beach 