What was important was the getting there, the journey itself. Birds were everywhere - tiny sanderlings skittered on the sand, chasing each wave in hopes that it had washed up a meal. By creating a patently flimsy pretext for a holiday hike, they said, they are also ensuring that the beach walk remains, in its own way, innocent. The Littoral Society, which derives its name from the Latin word for shore or beach, was founded in New Jersey in the early 1960's by a group of fishermen, scuba divers and biologists who all believed that preservation of the coast should go hand in hand with its active use. One of the group's annual trips, for example, consists of a seafood foraging expedition on Cumberland Island, off Georgia.
Some members fish, some dig for mussels, others harvest seaweed, then cook what they have gathered.
There are strong bonds within the group. Many of the members have known one another for decades, even though they might see each other only on this one day of the year. He was one of four of Mr. Cohen's old students in the group yesterday, all of whom said their former teacher had more or less single-handedly changed their view of nature through his passion for the ocean and the animals that depend upon it. Of course, there is also a certain cultural twain between New York and New Jersey, and both sides of the signal-failure divide were only too happy to suggest that perhaps some innate flaw on the opposite shore was the root cause of their inability to connect. We're city people.