Oysters: Pearl of Wisdom

The Big Oyster: History on the Half ShellTonight if you happened by my Facebook page, you will notice I  have oysters on the brain.
I have grown quite attached to the little critters that live on the tidelands of this Port Gamble Bay Beach House.

When I first moved here and the tide was low, the oysters revealed themselves in a blanket of shells that seemed to spread to infinity. I was awestruck as I'd never seen anything like it. That was  more than five years ago. Every single day I would monitor the tide, wait for the lowest time and then head to the beach, flashlight in hand, for my little bucket of lunch, supper mid-day or late night snack.

My oyster loving friends and I would lay on the beach with a lemon, an oyster knife, a corkscrew and wine bottle and laze the afternoon away

Company would come and we would barbecue oysters, steam them,  or eat them raw, or make oysters rockefeller. I also quickly learned you either love the bi-valves or you hate them.
There is no middle ground.

When I first moved into this secret little hideout, oysters became my drug of choice.
Perhaps that was because I tend to be anemic and rebellious.
And oysters are filled with iron and other yummy things the body craves.
They also don't hurt your love life any.
My husband was always game to come with me to the beach when a craving hit at midnight.
He'd happily shuck the shells for me even though the idea of eating them raw, he said, was disgusting.

Over the years, I would gather little buckets of oysters for a snack.
Until one day, I left a bucket by the back door, in the cold evening
I didn't eat them before I went to bed. Just left them there.
I knew how to care for them... covered them in seaweed,  they were still alive.
However, the next morning, when I contemplated eating one, something just happened in my brain.
It was like a switch.
I walked out the sliding glass doors to the beach and set the oysters free.
They bubbled their little thank yous and sank into the bay to live another day.

In the years past, I have seen poachers come and clear out our neighbors' beaches.
One such gang, I  and others reported to the police and they were ultimately busted and sentenced.
http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/b0a87f6046304bceb86783f765c66c80/WA--Shellfish_Poaching/

However, said oyster heisters wiped out many beaches of the Hood Canal of their very precious and rare resource... without paying the land owners who needed the money they'd be paid for their oysters to hold onto their  land or homes.

Now... I don't know who is reading this, where you live and what you care about.
No doubt you care less about an oyster than paying your power bill.
Maybe your house is in foreclosure, or you just lost your job.
Perhaps your child was abducted, your sister was murdered, you are facing a life theatening illness.

Or maybe, like me, the years are moving way too fast and you are trying to get a handle on the rough economic and political roads ahead.
Whatever point your life is at now, there is a lesson to be learned from the oyster.

The shell is hard.
The inside is soft.
From rough particles grow pearls.

The oyster goes with the flow.
It lets the ebbs and tides do what they will and it holds its ground.
The lowly oyster behaves far more approriately than many heavy handed, big mouth humans.
It minds its own business, just wants to be.
And when the lowest of low tides hit, the ones we call negative tides, somehow the oysters just  burrow in and hangs on until the tide returns.
The dry periods do not kill them and they will not kill you.
Just burrow in and hang on.

I met a man last moth who was a quadrapelegic. He was in his forties. He jumped off a bridge into the local rural watering hole when he was 16 and broke his neck. If that wasn't bad enough he developed retinol myophathy so severe,  he'd been blind since he was 18. So I greeted him, wondering how to do that when you can't shake hands.

I asked him how he was.
"Happy as an oyster," said.
It took me back.
It usually goes, "happy as a clam."

"Is an oyster happy?" I asked back.
"Happiest creature in the world" he said. "Gets to sleep all day in its bed, filter water, make babies, who could ask for more really?"
He had a point.

Here's where to go if you'd like to know more about the oyster.
http://www.oystermitts.com/html/oyster-trivia.html