Mother Nature's etch a sketch

Every few years we spend a week seaside at Hunting Island SC. In this time of recharging, unwinding, and wandering barefoot I'm drawn to the sand dunes behind the beach. Hunting Island is itself just a giant sand bar sticking out of the water on the edge of the great Atlantic. Covered in beach, maritime forest, and saltwater marsh. And on the margins of all these sand dunes composed of a bit of each. A nature lovers dream. Last time we were here I followed sea turtle tracks as they hauled themselves out of the ocean and across the beach to lay their eggs in the dunes. This year smaller tracks catch my eye as I wander away from the people and the beach and into wilds of the dunes.  Crabs, foxes, deer, birds, even insects, they all leave their mark on the sand. Some took a bit of detective works to figure out. Beautiful looping squiggles and spirals I found after a bit of probing with a grass stem were caused by a tiny arthropod that looked like the pill bugs back home. Cones were deadly traps for tiny insects made by ant lions  Even the plants make tracks here. The tough sea oats and other grasses bend in the ever present wind and draw in the sand. Like nothing more than the spirographs we played with as children producing those strange yet beautiful patterns known as hypotrochoids. A hypotrochoid is a pattern generated by a fixed point on a circle rolling inside a fixed circle. Like those plastic circles of the spirograph. Or in my imagination, already sensitized by the heat and a bit too much crawfish gumbo for lunch, the patterns drawn in the sands by wind, the stems of plants and the whimsy of mother nature...