Heat dome memories

Walking the shoreline at low tide now, I cant help thinking back to the 2021 heat dome and reports of shellfish cooked alive on beaches across our coast. It changed how I see places like this. Intertidal zones can be so full of life, but the heat dome was a reminder that the stability of these ecosystems is already changing, and that a single climate event can create lasting, landscape-level effects. There’s a kind of creeping anxiety that comes with watching familiar ecosystems change, like losing a reference point you didn’t realize you depended on.