The Treasures in Store at the Shore

Beachcoming my emblem for summer. Each summer, our family migrates back to a small coastal town in Maine where we mess around in boats, pick blueberries, fish for mackerel. lounge bookishly in the hammock by the grandfather elm, and comb the pebbled shore. Life ebbs and flows with the rhythm of tides and daylight, versus the clock or jobs that govern the rest of the year.

It's not perfect: The harbor master may be seen wearing an electronic pager as he regulates sailors tying up at the dock, and even the tentacles of FedEx reach down the peninsula two days a week. "Here too in Arcadia." I overheard one schooner passenger pleading to her husband. as he headed for the grocery store: "Oh, please don't buy a newspaper." We, too, seek blissful ignorance. To construct the illusion of 19th-century living, the world must be kept at bay.

This is the season and the place for gathering news of our interior world. Our beach is a repository for the tides of the bay at the mouth of the mighty Penobscot River. And our harbor is the site of several ship sinkings during military skirmishes in the 17th and 18th centuries, when world powers vied for access to Maine's forested interior.

In our first summers here, we had a romantic notion that the worn china and sanded blue glass we gleaned on the shore had washed out of a British frigate decaying on the harbor bottom. When we learned that it was only the old town dump sunken 100 yards offshore, we felt cheated. All our porcelain was trash, not treasure.

But -our collecting has not slowed. The children love these humble vestiges of former times. A shard of blue filigree china remains exotic. "Treasure" is defined by provenance and the current collector. It is not intrinsic.

Summer's intertidal zone collects and gathers us as much as we collect and gather what the tides deposit. My hammock reading yielded this thought: "A child comes to the edge of deep water with a mind prepared for wonder," writes Edward O. Wilson. "He is like a primitive adult of long ago, an acquisitive early Homo arriving at the shore of Lake Malawi....

 

So each summer when we arrive at our -deep-water haunt, we begin a new collection to add to the old. We examine the effects of winter storms on our Maine Malawi, and we note the new moorings, new boats, and new boaters. We reconnect with people in town: the watercolor painter, the poet, the retired architect, the merchant-marine engineer. But it Is really ourselves with whom we reconnect picking up where we left off and noticing the significant ways in which we are changed, and in which we are not.

Jars of beach china line our mantel; the new album of summer photos helps to chronicle our combing. Against the consistent background of the cove shore, the foreground shows us holding with children who walk in taller and taller shoes. The lad who balked when setting foot in the canoe last year goes on a long paddle around the pond to see the loons; his sister now fishes solo when the mackerel are running. From year to year the changes seem immense, but the snapshots also remind me of the imperceptibleness of summer's nonlinear growth, without a scheduled goal or level of achievement to prod or measure. Wilson notes, "Adults ... undervalue the mental growth that occurs during daydreaming and aimless wandering."

September floods in like a full moon or high tide, and we return to our alternate rhythm: metropolitan suburbia. As we drop our young beachcombers off at school, the moment contains complex overlappings of what they were, are, and will be. Languor and aimlessness give way, with melancholy, to organization and structure.

But I always hope the kids will carry with them what they have found by the sea the I daydreams that were the vessels of this summer's collecting to guide their walk toward June and the next season of beachcombing, of aimless, important wandering. As e.e. cummings wrote:

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me) It's always ourselves we find in the sea

705 words, from csm, Sept. 4, 98, p 8. file name: csm98948.doc

 

VOCABULARY

emblem                       象征，标志

Maine                          缅因州（美国）

mess around                （美俚）浪费时间

mackerel                            鲐鱼

lounge                         闲逛

hammock                           （帆布或网状的）吊床

elm                              榆木

comb                           彻底搜查

ebb                             落潮，衰落

versus                          与。。。 相对

tentacle                        触手，触角，触须，触器

schooner                            纵帆船，（美）有蓬四轮大马车

blissful                         极乐的，有福的

ignorance                            无知，愚昧

repository                    储藏所，仓库

skirmish                       小规模战斗

vie                               争，竞争

glean                           拾，发现，找到

frigate                          （18-19世纪）装有大炮的快速帆船

dump                           垃圾堆

vestige                         痕迹，遗迹，残余

shard                           （陶瓷等的）碎片

filigree                         金丝（或银丝，铜丝）的细工饰品

exotic                          奇异的，吸引人的

provenance                  起源，出处

intrinsic                        内在的，固有的，本质的

acquisitive                    贪得的

haunt                           常去的地方

moorings                            停船处，系船用的绳索，铁链等

boater                         硬草帽

mantel                         壁炉台

chronicle                      记载

cove                                   小海湾

foreground                   （图画，相片的）前景

balk                             犹豫不决

loon                             大型食鱼海鸟

solo                             单独的

snapshot                      快照

imperceptibleness        [comes from the word "imperceptible"（因为小或轻）觉察不到的]

nonlinear                      非线性的

prod                                   刺激，促使，激励

alternate                      交替的，轮流的

overlappings                重叠

languor                        （精神上的）消沉，（气候，气氛等引起的）倦怠，沉闷

melancholy                  忧郁，意气消沉

vessel器皿

 

Exercise 1

Decide whether the following statements are TRUE or FALSE. If they are false, give the correct statements.

1.        The writer's family spends each summer at the shore playfully and relaxedly.

2.        The life rhythm at the shore is the same as that of the rest of the year,

3.        People at the beach want to know the news all over of the world.

4.        Some ships sank where the harbor is in the 17th and 18th centuries.

5.        All the porcelain they found on the shore are proved to be trash, not treasure.

6.        Each summer people get rid of old treasures and collect the new ones.

 

Exercise 2

The following items contain some vocabulary from the passage. Each of the vocabulary terms is printed in boldface and given in the context in which it occurs. Use the context to help you find the correct definitions that follow. Write the letters in the blanks.

____             1. A shard of blue filigree china remains exotic.

____      2. So each summer when we arrive at our-deep-water haunt, we begin a new collection to add to the old.

____      3. But it is really ourselves with whom we reconnect picking up where we left off and noticing the significant ways in which we are changed , …

____             4. … the new album of summer photos helps to chronicle our combing.

____             5. … his sister now fishes solo when the mackerel are running.

____      6. … but the snapshots also remind me of the imperceptibleness of summer's nonlinear growth, …

____      7. Adults…undervalue the mental growth that occurs during daydreaming and aimless wandering.

____             8. … and we return to our alternate rhythm: metropolitan suburbia.

____             9. Languor and aimlessness give way, with melancholy, to organization and structure.

 

a.  to make someone to remember

b. paying attention to with the eyes, other senses, or mind

c.  tiredness of mind or  body, lack of strength or will

d. a place to go regularly

e.  without a companion

f.   to search a place thoroughly

g.  strange and unusual

h.  (of 2 things) happening by turns; first one and then the other

i.    moving about without a fixed course, aim, or purpose

 

ZXY

 

Key

Exercise 1

1 T         2 F         3 F         4 T         5 T         6 F

Exercise 2

1 g         2 d         3 b         4 f          5 e         6 a         7 I          8 h         9 c