The Lone Mussel: My Moana Moment

Something really cool happened to me today!

The Scene

I’m wandering along the beach in Whiritoa. It’s a surf-beach with rips and currents, not for swimming. But it’s picture-perfect: soft white sand dotted with a few sea-shells, islands in the distance, cliffs on either end, and not a single person to be found. I’m the only one tottering through the sand.

On the south end of the beach rise several cliffs, and I’ve wandered that direction before, but never at low-tide. At high-tide, there’s a dip in the cliff that gets battered with waves, and I’ve been meaning to see what lies on the other side when it’s not rocked with waves and frothing with white water.

So I picked my way over to find a smooth expanse of beach where usually it’s savage water, and I venture in, gazing up at the cliffs, the soft rock carved with names and designs, possibly new last summer or maybe decades old. It’s cute and sheltered, and I take the time to leave my footprints in the sand. I’m glad I wandered over, just to see it this way, at low-tide, at least once.

The Inciting Incident

I’m wandering, each step perhaps carrying me more to the left or the right than straight ahead. There’s no particular hurry and I feel the sand shift beneath my feet. The soft sound of the waves, sussurating in a steady rhythm, creeping up the sand and retreating with gentle movement.

And leaving something behind… Disney-princess style.

It’s a shadow on a pristine white beach, nudged toward me by a shy wave. A shell, I think. One of many left by the receding tide.

But it’s much bigger than the dark wing-like shells usually left behind, scattered among the white sand like a reverse night sky.

I near. I crouch. I gasp.

It’s the dark shell of a mussel, black-clad like the others, but unlike the others, this one is closed.

The ocean has given me a mussel.

(And all I can picture is that scene in the Disney movie Moana where the sea gives Moana the heart of Te Fiti).

The Plot Thickens

So I pick it up.

And I’m wondering if it’s legal to take mussels off a beach. I’m wondering if there’s something wrong with it. I’m wondering if there’s any way I have the right ingredients to cook it up Japanese-style with dynamite sauce and masago (the answer to that is no).

And I’m wondering if there are more.

So I walk up and down the beach, but the surf only intends one of these gifts for me today.

Upon returning to my AirBnB, I drop the mussel in salt water and let it sit. I also attempt to discover what kind of mussel it is. Green Lipped Mussels are very common in New Zealand and based on the size, that’s what I would identify it as. However, there is no green color on the shell. But black mussels are supposedly only 2.5 inches and this is at least 4. So I’m left wondering.

The Dark Night

The Waiting

4:34. 4:33. 4:32…

The Final Moments

When my timer sounds it’s little ditty, I remove the lid…

To find a cracked open mussel. It was alive (though now I’ve killed it), and that means it’s safe to eat.

I scoop out the mussel and drench it in some left-over Thai curry sauce, grinning ear to ear all the while. And it’s delicious. Not quite Japanese-baked-mussel delicious, but delicious all the same, made more so by my fortuitous luck, my moments of possible disappointment, and the fact that I prepared it myself.

The Epilogue

I am perfectly aware that what happened is the ocean-side equivalent of going on a hike in Colorado and finding wild berries, BUT I am generally equally as excited to find wild berries on a hike, and it can’t only be me who feels that way.

I think it’s easy to forget how valuable food is these days because we have such extensive farming and fishing industries. But there’s something deeply ingrained within me, possibly that carries back to the hunter/gatherer days of my ancestors, that feels the discovery of food on a deeper level. Almost as though there is something spiritual about the soils or seas revealing their bounty.

About being the sole person on a beautiful beach as the waves present an offering of life.