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Ocean Views

Summer beasts

Kim Gaffett

Tue, Jul 3

Category:

Ocean Views

Fireflies, moths, butterflies, beetles, mantids, dragonflies and damselflies are summer’s beautiful beasts. July is the month of long twilight, short nights, and warm still mornings — the perfect time to observe some of nature’s most fantastic winged creatures. The life cycle of any of the island’s...
June fog

Kim Gaffett

Sat, May 26

Category:

Ocean Views

Water is a phenomenal substance. It is believed that where water does not exist life does not exist. Consider the hunt for signs of water in our solar system — Mars for instance — in hopes of divining evidence of once-upon-a-time life. Water is a shape-changer; between ice and steam there is dew,...
Tiny May flowers

Kim Gaffett

Tue, May 1

Category:

Ocean Views

There are many signs that herald the arrival of spring. One of the most noted is the sudden bursting forth of flowers in May. Blooming shrubs and trees such as shad, apple, azalea, beach plum, or horse chestnut immediately come to mind. Perhaps it will be the brilliance of dandelion, hawkweed,...
Ocean Views: Marine animals and the sound of spring rolling in

Kim Gaffett

Wed, Apr 4

Category:

Ocean Views

Although there is great promise of warmth and new life in April, the month can be cold, grey and bony: a month with an exoskeleton. But April also beckons for beach walks, a time when almost anything can be found at the island’s edge. The shoreline can be wide and flat at low tide, or narrow and...
Malleable and resolute: Clay is the 'bedrock' of Block Island

Kim Gaffett

Sun, Feb 26

Category:

Ocean Views

It can be pounded and extruded, hand-built or thrown, excavated to create cozy nests, or become wind- and rain-sculpted hoodoos. Clay is Block Island’s “bedrock.” In its simplest form, clay is a substance made of very small particles of minerals such as aluminum silicate. Much smaller in grain size...
What are you doing over February Vacation?

Kim Gaffett

Mon, Feb 13

Category:

Ocean Views

If your week of winter wandering will be based on the “Bermud a of the North” — Block Island, that is — consider joining one of the following free Ocean View Foundation programs. Monday, February 20: Great Backyard Bird Count — a Block Island Tutorial The Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC) is a four-...
Ocean Views: Wax myrtle, myrtle warbler

Kim Gaffett

Wed, Feb 1

Category:

Ocean Views

Grey is the color of February. But look closely; it can be a stunning grey. Charcoal grey trunks of shad, blotched with ash-grey lichens, almost luminescent in late-afternoon light. Stone walls, uncluttered by vines and leaves, weight hill and dale with intricate granite-grey tatted edges. Incoming...
January cod

Kim Gaffett

Thu, Jan 19

Category:

Ocean Views

Steakers, tobies, tongues and cheeks: January is — was — the month for cod fishing. As most know, Block Island fishermen hunted inshore. They fished the seasons, and winter was the season of codfish. In the days when “boats were made of wood, and men were made of steel,” island fishermen would go...
Snowflakes 0: American Crows 331, and counting

Kim Gaffett

Wed, Jan 4

Category:

Ocean Views

The weather proved too warm for snowflakes, flurries or feathered. Although a hearty group looked high and low for snow buntings (or Snowflakes) and snowbirds (or slate-colored juncos) none were seen as we swirled and drifted around Block Island during the eleventh annual OVF Community Bird Census...
Chasing snowflakes

Kim Gaffett

Mon, Dec 26

Category:

Ocean Views

For a scant two hours on the morning of December 18 the quiet Block Island air was adrift with lightly tumbling snowflakes; the season’s first – and hopefully not only – snow flurry. In the shadows and shelters of north-facing objects one could find a few unmelted flakes wedged between still-green...
Hoary frost and December nights

Kim Gaffett

Mon, Dec 12

Category:

Ocean Views

A morning stroll in 60 degree weather takes me by the smooth-as-ice “duck pond” on Old Town Road. I note, as a few mallards slip into the surface — seemingly buoyant both above and below the watery lens — that this wide-edged soup bowl in the landscape is full to the brim, and beyond. And I am...
November fishing

Kim Gaffett

Tue, Nov 1

Category:

Ocean Views

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after. – H.D. Thoreau Block Island is covered and surrounded by piscine environments, and November is the perfect time for fishing – if not necessarily catching. I suspect that nothing quiets the soul or...
Full Manisses Moon

Kim Gaffett

Wed, Sep 28

Category:

Ocean Views

October is a month of reacquaintances and stunning beauty. Exhibit no. 1: It has been nearly a year since we’ve had the pleasure of greeting our old friend Northern Blazing Star ( Liatris borealis ). This lovely plant (both rare and native) thrives in some of the island’s most austere...
Full Sand Moon

Kim Gaffett

Wed, Aug 10

Category:

Ocean Views

It is the season of sandcastles and hot-footing it across black sand. The dog days of summer when bodies can find their own form in warm soothing sand. We may take it for granted but the sandy shores of Block Island form a complex and dynamic buffer between stable land and the animated sea. In a...
Roseate Moon

Kim Gaffett

Wed, Jun 1

Category:

Ocean Views

Juneberry, beach plum, chokeberry, chokecherry, blackberry, multiflora, pasture, rugosa, Dorothy Perkins: roses all. The first days of June on Block Island are laden with any number of wild flowering plants of the rose family (rosaceae). Beach plum’s long, thick stems of small white flowers are...
Horsefoot Moon

Kim Gaffett

Thu, May 19

Category:

Ocean Views

Horsefoots are plodding out of the sea; drawn by new and full moon ebb tides, they have been doing this for 350 million years. One of earth’s oldest creatures, horseshoe crabs are truly fascinating. And now is the time to start a season of observations. Horseshoe crabs (not a true crab, but rather...
Rocks, stones and erratics: the 'bedrock' of life

Kim Gaffett

Mon, Apr 11

Category:

Ocean Views

Rocks, stones and erratics: the “bedrock” of life Garnet, quartz, mica, pyrite – stones, rocks, erratic boulders: the substrate upon which all Block Island life exists. Block Island’s geology offers several allegories. As a terminal moraine (a debris field of materials relocated here by moving and...

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