a muddy beach

A MUDDY BEACH

i read about this in the online paper
and
saw it on the local news

you know when you hear things
sometimes
you just say
that doesnt seem like the right thing to do

now
i am an outsider here
having lived here for only 7 months
and
not having had gone through this history of mud and fires
around here like folks have who lived here for years

still
i think it gives a different perspective on things
when you are new and fresh to things
you sometimes see things differently

so
it was with me

there it was truckloads of mud slide muck being hauled
down to the beach near here
the goleta beach
to be dump right on the beach
not just a few truckloads
tons of truckloads stuff

now
granted from what i read
the stuff is trucked an hour or so south
so the debris in there like metal and rocks and logs etc
are removed
then
off to the goleta beach it goes
to be dumped
to be washed apparently over and over again
by the waves coming in on the beach
you know like when you do a sand castle on the beach
and
the tide comes in and eventually washes it away

now i saw this big ole dumpster there on the dumped on beach
that was partially full of all kind of stuff

no the beaches are not white
they are a mud grey color

one of the justifications for doing it here is
the mudslide stuff is destined by nature to eventually end
up in the ocean anyway

now
when we made our long long trip north then around the mountains
to get to los angeles for my last infusion
we passed what seemed like hundreds of dump trucks in a long
long line waiting to dump this stuff into a quarry up north

the goleta beach i think is sort of a poor mans beach
i havent really read that before
its just seems thats the way it is
theres no tourists here

so i wanted to see all this for myself
so one sunday morning before my wife she woke up
i drove over to see for myself

there was all this yellow and red like tape around the dump areas
warning signs were up
dont swim in this water
its contaminated
worse i think with human bacteria

this beach sits in a cove just south of the ucsb campus
you can see the building of the school on the small bluffs close by
i saw several what looked like students walking and biking
on nearby trails

i walked out on the wharf or pier that goes out quite a ways
i would say over a quarter of a mile
there were a lot of folks even this early
as the sun had just popped over the horizon
fishing off the pier

you cant swim here but you can fish here
seems like
not right to me

i looked back over to see the dark spot in the distance
where the dumpster was and big ole heavy machnery was sitting
i guess they all get sunday off

i then walked back to the shore
climbed down off the pier
onto the shoreline
i guess you call it the beach
a dark grey mud colored one

i walked along the edge of the surf as it wiggles back and forth
sometimes catching my feet off guard
getting them all wet
and
i guess
contaminated

i then walked up to the marked off area
the tide was low so i just walked along the waters edge
into and on top of that dark grey mud colored beach
it didnt sink in
it didnt stick heavy to my shoes like mud
but it felt and looked a different consistency
the beach if thats what you call it
didnt feel right as you walked on it
if i took my shoes off
that wouldnt be sand between my toes

i walked up the beach to the machinery
one of those big monster things
you might see in a quarry

i turned and looked back into the sun at the pier
at the beach not affected yet
there was only one other person beside me walking on it
i was the one that broke around the barrier

so after reading about all this
reading about the bacteria counts
reading about how it not chemically contaminated
i dont believe that one
knowing how things work in this world

all i could think
was
why dump that stuff here
i dont understand why

the organicgreen doctor