Our last beach walk of the year. Much of the ice has melted, the animals can scavenge again, feasting on horseshoe crabs and blue claws dredged up by the grim grinding ice. Dying comb jellies glistened on the beach, ignored by the gulls.

I found a small whitish clam panning the beach with its foot, perhaps a young surf clam. I tossed it back into the bay, my last clam of the year.

The last day of the year is a human construct.,

Today will be a little different than yesterday, true. The sun will hang in the sky a minute longer today, angling a hair higher in the sky. High tide will be almost an hour later, and a few inches higher.

I teach indoors, obviously, in 48 minute chunks. Biology happens outside, in millennial chunks. Transferring knowledge of life is a Sisyphean task.

I condemn others' acts of hubris while ignoring my own, trying to stuff minds with abstract shadows of what can be found just outside the classroom window, if we took time to look.

The word "education" comes from educere, "to bring out, lead forth." My best days are those when I lead the students out the door to the real world outside, the one that created us, the one we cannot hope to fully grasp.

Photo by Leslie, December 31, 2010