Shearwater Pier

The family compound where I grew up has always had a pier. It began, as far as I know, with my uncle Peter, who was also the master potter at Shearwater Pottery. Peter made pottery, built boats and piers, and put piers back together again after hurricanes. 

As children, my siblings, my cousins and I used the pier for fishing and catching crabs. We didn't have traps; we had strings onto which we tied chicken necks and oyster shells. If a crab grabbed hold, we scooped them with nets on long handles. In those days the crabs had a fighting chance, and catching one was a kind of victory. 

The pier in my photograph was built back several years after hurricane Katrina by some builders hired by my cousin, Marjorie. It stretches sweetly out over the water toward Deer Island. My uncle Peter was Marjorie's father, and the pier is kind of a memorial to him and also to Marjorie's husband, Pete. This pier, as with the early piers built by my uncle, is built simply...nothing elaborate. I love the functional nature and the spare design...the long walk out to the end that requires one's full attention.