Encounters at the margins: An original short essay series by Kyra Morris
Dispatches: encounters at the margins, written by Kyra Morris, is a series of vignettes drawn from experiences at ecological and cultural boundaries. It will take readers to a shifting pebble coastline in England, an urban salt marsh in New Jersey, a myth-drenched island off the coast of Ireland, and a barrier beach in South Carolina that records the history of slavery in the United States. Inspired by encounters that occurred at the margins of more deliberate research projects, these vignettes are experiments in writing the unexpected, the un-planned, the unclassifiable. They are not extensive site histories but “dispatches”—messages from topographical and intellectual margins meant to invite further inquiry.
Dispatch 1: Shingle street
My walk from the town of Orford to the beach at Shingle Street begins with a mistake. I’m only half-way through my first cup of weak pub-coffee when I realize that the ferry I thought could take me to my starting point only runs on weekends, and it is not a weekend. There’s no other public transportation between these two points. Orford is a picturesque former fishing town with one main street of rose covered cottages, two pubs, and one excellent bakery. Shingle Street is a strip of beach with no pubs, no bakery, and just a handful of summer cottages. Without the ferry, I would need to walk an extra seven miles inland to cross the Butley River, bringing my total miles for the day from a manageable fourteen to an ill-advised twenty-one.
