cute little tree-hugger

I don’t get to the beach often.  When I’m to sojourn in the vicinity, I try to run barefoot along the ocean’s edge every other day.  I am somewhat near-sighted, but still try to run without the specs when I can.  So I plodded along Playa Conchal maybe six times in the two weeks I was recently there.  And on my next-to-last run, thought I had seen gnomes or dwarf-like beach creatures on the way out … but didn’t realize that there REALLY WERE dwarf-like gnome-thingies until the return slog.  (The light must have been better.)

“Well,” I thought.  “Someone’s been busy.”

At first I saw a couple, then three, a group of four up on a tree’s branches.

Yep … someone had spent many hours and populated a sizable slice of the transition zone where the beach-sand reaches the scrub-forest and dunes.

I’d see nothing for 50 yards, then a whole village of them!

Betty and I went back that afternoon.  I saw a lady with a dog I thought I had seen out for a run that morning, but she assured me that she would do no such thing.  Betty struck up a conversation with her.  An ex-pat, she had a house not too far from where we were staying.  And she had a neighbor, Bob.

Local (gringo) resident lady with dogs told Betty that that is what Bob does.  Periodically walks the ocean edge piling up rocks.  Hoodoo-assemblage.  He doesn’t “do” Inuk-type fabrications, just what you see here.

He could be “Bobb”, perhaps “Bawb.”  Our last day there I saw a fellow who could have been he.  He was drawing a large complex mandala in the sand and a couple companions were watching.  I should have either sketched or photographed it.  It reminded me of American Indian Sun-wheels.  Prayer-wheels.  Whatever.  The lady companion played hopscotch on it.

I added a few structures, as I should, after all, keep in practice for the inevitable return to InukShux of the high desert.

Some of the hoodoos take a bit of balancing …

And another village out to witness whatever.  And the ugly one below (Bob didn’t make that).