BY HARRY WEEKES
So, the cutlass fish.
It is the third time I have been to North Carolina’s Outer Banks. A large, thickly vegetated dune buttresses against the sea. This rounded wall quickly drops to miles and miles of sand stretched north and south. Walking either way, you can only see so far before your vision dissolves in mist. Everything here reflects the millennial old relationship of water meeting land. Waves break constantly and chaotically across shifting sand bars and the thousands of miles of open ocean between here and Africa.
We walk north and then back south, moving in that part of the intertidal zone where the sand stays firm. On one side of the ideal walking path, it is dry and, well, sandy. On the other side, that interesting space between solid and liquid, where waves whisper out their final energy. Here, the shorebirds hunt, zigging and zagging along the rapidly retreating waveline, their legs a comical blur, furiously drilling for crabs.
In three years, I have never seen a fish. I have seen hopeful fishermen, casting heavy lures into the surf, and leaving long lines stretched into the distant waves. But I have never seen a fish.
On day two, this changed.
A great black-backed gull stood on shore ahead of us, worrying something. My initial thought, “It’s eating the remains of some net.” It carried what looked to be loose rope away from our approach. We passed the gull poking and pulling at its prize, now covered in sand. On the return, the gull dropped the cargo in front of us, and we got to see that the bird was picking apart the remains of a fish. Long and slender, we could make out parts of the skeleton and its considerable teeth.
I could now say, in three years I have never seen a live fish.
On day three, this changed.
Ahead of us, a wave shot up the beach, leaving behind a thousand bubbles and a writhing something. The dachshunds perked up and shot forward. The dachshund owners perked up at the perking up and I heard what has becomes music to my ears, “Dad, come quick!”
Even as I focused on the wriggling and snaking in front of me, Georgia asked the observation, “Is it an eel?”
Huge round eyes, glistening silver skin, a jutting underbite, sharp buck teeth, and a vertically elongated body shaped for speed, this fish said one thing: I hunt.
Growing up in Idaho can make you stupid to dangerous things simply because you don’t come around many that you can easily pick up.
Fortunately, in some cases, groups can temper stupidity.
“Don’t pick it up!”
“What is it?” I asked back, even as I worked to catch the fish and to get it back to the ocean.
A cutlass is a short, slightly curved sabre, kind of like a sea machete. Apparently, they were favored by pirates, scoundrels, and buccaneers. The cutlass fish very aptly bears the same name, both in description and purpose.
I looked around to the locals and asked my standard astonished question of discovery, “Are these here?”, then quickly followed it up to hide the idiocy of the obvious, “I mean, do you see these all the time?”
“I’ve never seen one of those before,” was the only reply I got.
As the party continued on, I watched where the fish flashed back into the ocean.
Looking at a thousand intersecting waves as if to catch some final finned glimpse, the question echoed, “That lives here?”
I turned back up the beach, hustling to catch the group, the mystery and wonder of the world getting just a little bit bigger.
Harry Weekes is the founder and head of school at The Sage School in Hailey. This is his 54th year in the Wood River Valley, where he lives with Hilary and their two mini-Dachshunds. The baby members of their flock have now become adults; Georgia and Simon are fledging in North Carolina, and Penelope has recently changed roosting sites to Connecticut.
