The Best of Tidal Life, the Early Years

Maintenance time at Tidal Life

We regularly scrape barnacles and green growth off Sunshine and The Dink, but now and then the underside of the website needs the same attention.

Part of this latest overhaul is removing duplicate content. Duplicates are frowned upon by Google and the other search engines of note. An article that appears in two places, even if I wrote them both, looks like copying. So I’m in the process of taking down the original Tidal Life.

The Tidal Life blog began on Blogger

As sort of a snapshot in time, I left the old Tidal Life blog and all the old posts in place on Blogger. Nothing new has been added there since 2010. But nine years is enough, so I have moved the old posts to this site.

Anyone who’d like to see what was happening back then and what was top of my mind in those land based days can start with these links. They form a short tour through my life and topics of the time.

Articles of particular interest:

Sunrise –  my very first post.

Inventory Time – about the work with Beach Watchers that started it all

Clams, Clams and More Clams – a story of angst and acceptance at the beach

Beach Finds – the uneasy relationship between trash and treasure

Even More Clams – science and trends among the mollusks

Nameless and the Noctiluca – why my sailboat was engulfed in a sea of orange algae

Wading in the Dark – a nighttime visit to an eelgrass bed to collect specimens and data

Madrone Meets Subaru – the time my beloved tree took out my car

Sea Level – ruminations and observations on the variable height of water

More Tidal Life history

There are many more stories you might enjoy, short snippets of life, diatribes about pollution, announcements of environmental news and activities. I’m very fond of what I wrote about back then, warts and all.

And here’s a link to the really early stuff – my Tidal Life columns for the South Whidbey Record.

I hope you enjoy this glimpse into my formative years and all that was going on around Whidbey Island and Puget Sound back in the day.

About the Featured Photo

The photo above is a watercolor I did when I was trying to learn how to make water lay down. It’s of a man paddling a cayuca on the Amazon. I sold that painting when we moved aboard Sunshine. It now hangs in a private collection on Whidbey Island. Which is a pretentious way of saying somebody bought it to decorate their vacation rental cottage.

I attached it to this post because it seems to me that it says a bunch of things about what Tidal Life represents and what water is all about. Art, boats, transportation, sport, tradition, culture, the learning process, doing it yourself and going places. Though I can see all its flaws, I’m proud of that piece and it inspires me to better.

Thanks for reading Tidal Life over the years. You too inspire me to better.