#60 A WOMAN'S BRIEFS, DAY TWO: MOON SNAIL SHELLS 1987
MOON SNAIL SHELL
In 1987, visiting Washington state with a plan for our eventual move there, I wrote:
Unlike my warmer California beaches where teeming life describes tanning bodies and hotdog stands, the cold water of Hood Canal slaps mostly against un-peopled shores. Clams, oysters, wolf eels, assorted crabs, snails gnat small or half a grapefruit large, and limpets grapple for space among barnacled rocks and occasional clean runs of sand. Low tide invites my shell hunt.
I seek treasures but not the sort that belong on glass shelves with indirect lightening. No cowries, no nautilus, no queen conch or tibia. Shells along my path are flinty, like local fishermen who run their nets in deep, circular fields from boats sitting heavy in the middle of the canal; boats moving slowly above their gravely engine sounds.
Like the fishermen prowling the channel, shore life here is scruffy and tough. Pacific Horseneck clams, Butter clams, Minilas, and prickly Cockles vie for survival but I ignore these. My search is for the Northern Moon Snail; the pest of Puget Sound; the culprit responsible for drilled holes in clam shells, for gluttony, and shoreline thievery.
Until today, I have managed to see this carnivorous gastropod only from a rowboat where, with its frilly foot fanned far beyond the boundaries of its four-inch house, it navigates the inlet’s floor and hunts small clams. It’s its house, a winding, widening golden mean, that I seek. Its symmetry evokes the thought of molten rock caught, cooled, then curled round a pole. Today, unlike the past eighteen days when I have walked the beach, I found it. I found four.
Truth is, I found five. The fifth was damaged, and I meant to throw it away, but as I turned it in my hand, it attached to my mind. I meant to toss it because something had broken through the top of its shell. A crow? A heron? A collision with crashing rocks? I will never know.
This imperfection reminds me that even when the snail’s tough, thick door, the operculum, slams shut against intrusion; even when its vulnerable inner life slips deep within a carefully constructed shell, there is no guarantee that self will not be reached. Northern moon snails are very nearly impenetrable; but only very nearly.
I placed the broken shell in my bag along with the four perfect specimens. I am glad for this broken one. I am reminded that we people build carefully constructed shells that grow thick and tight around us. We learn to hide inside, slamming doors against access or intrusion. Only, our shells, too, can be broken, our vulnerability exposed. People shells can protect, or they can prohibit, but they can be penetrated. For the snail, the break signals death. For a person, surely it means life.
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