yellow snails on a fence

Dad had made boats out of pine bark to float on the beach. He carved a shape of a boat directly into the tree and broke out as many layers as he could get. The pine bark looks like a topographical map. He had a discerning eye for pieces that would describe steep mountains. Then he bored a hole for a twig mast, and attached paper to the mast. He played with these boats in the long pools that lined the shore. The water gets caught in the middle of the beach after high tide, in a shallow depression of sand, and warms up quickly under the sun, forming a vast kiddy pool. Sitting in this pool, the ocean is manageable.