Snails

It is sometime during the Bay Area’s Coronavirus Shelter-in-Place order. I go out walking with my camera, as I do every day. It has been raining on and off this week and wildflowers are blooming. The hills are that green that only lasts a few weeks: vibrant; ephemeral. I meander from my in-law studio in the Richmond Annex, south through the Little Hill in El Cerrito, and over to the mud flats and the Albany Bulb. On my way there I pass under freeways that remind me of Catherine Opie. Maybe I spend some of the time talking on the phone with a friend or my parents. When I left, I did not intend to go to The Bulb, but by the time I arrived, I was listening to a podcast about Horishi Sugimoto’s photographs of theaters. It reminds me of the BAMPFA show I went to last autumn featuring Nigel Poor’s solo exhibition, and the essay one of her students authored about a photograph from this series. The Bulb is the most crowded place I have been since we began sheltering in place. There isn’t a parking lot, but the roads are lined with parked cars. People’s dogs are off leash- something surprising as two dogs at Point Isabel had tested positive for COVID-19. This is in the time when masks were occasional and not yet recommended for daily use by the CDC, and not many of us are wearing them. Entering The Bulb, the road splits into a paved path on one side of a short wooden fence and a gravel/dirt path on the other. I walk on the unpaved path- it has already dried since the rain. As I walk I look down. Hundreds of snails are trying to cross the path. Less than half are alive- less than half of the dead ones are whole. They’ve been crushed by people’s shoes, dried by the dusty ground- shriveled, or maimed in some other way. What is the point of a fragile shell? It just started raining as I write this. I wonder if tomorrow, snails will be crossing that dirt path again. I wonder if I should return to The Bulb soon and photograph them with more precision.