Halloween Paganism thoughts

Paganism was a topic in today's NYTimes, it's growth and greater acceptance in the US -- their tribute to Halloween. Rachel and I and Molly-dog had a beautiful walk on the beach this morning, nice breeze, watery sky and ocean blues, golden beach grass and leaves and beige sand, high tide coming in chasing us up to the highest margin of beach sand. Besides the Shell Tree of which I've written in the past, at which we paused, as always, to admire and to replace one fallen shell, various other bushes are being festooned with shells as well, like the ones in this picture which are further along the inlet side of the spit that is Long Beach. I told her that in my walks I've become one of the "keepers of the trees" and often replace falllen shells or even take some new ones now and then. She added a couple shells so she's also a keeper of the trees.

At a few other places people have put broken conch shells on the branches of shrubs. [see my post of last week in my other blog about the cairn and the prayer flags]. I wouldn't call it paganism, but some impulse is at work on the beach -- by some part of the population. Another part of the population left a scatter of crushed aluminum cans in a spot where there was probably a party last night. The impulse to decorate trees and build cairns [and tear them down] must be very ancient, so much so that for many people it is lost, perhaps with the exception of Christmas trees. At any rate, it was a beautiful morning for a walk, and many others plus their dogs thought so too.