Agate is a translucent variety of chalcedony, a quartz stone that can be either clear or colored from other minerals. It comes in many shapes and patterns and all colors (although green and blue are rare) and you can usually find them near rivers, streams or my favorite, at the sea. Usually a little heavier than most rocks, agates often sink or hide beneath other stones. When I was nine or so, I got to spend a week in a cottage at the beach with my mother while my father stayed in the city. He brought us down on a Saturday then left on Sunday for the work week. I’d been all excited over a few agates I’d found, and he was skeptical that I could find very many more.
Continue reading...27. April 2009
They lie hidden in soft cliffs above this beach, waiting for each cycle of winter storms to loosen the historic record, then layer by layer they are exposed and tumble to the sand below. These Miocene fossils carry the imprint of animals from an era so long gone it is nearly unknowable. Yet the images are familiar: a snail shell, a spiral nautilus and this scallop shell, once home to a living being who knew these shores ice ages ago. To hold this relic in my hand connects me to my evolution, to my own watery past—perhaps even on these same shores. Was I once this scallop? Did I crawl onshore seeking something else, something better? Was I this intertidal adventurer, both of the sea and the beach?
Continue reading...19. April 2009
I am rock happy. Not a rock hound—I don’t spend time in deserts with a pick digging for geodes. Though I do find the odd rock on mountain trips or along river beds, the vast majority of my rock allies come to me on beaches. I used to hoard rocks. Once in my 30s, I corralled some friends to help me move. At one point some of the men grumbled about the weight of ten or so extra heavy boxes and said to me: “Yikes, what do you have in here, rocks?” I was afraid to tell them they were correct, for fear they’d refuse to carry them up the long flight of stairs. Most of those early finds have long since been returned to a fine shore.
Continue reading...14. February 2009
I collect hearts. Hearts made of shell and stone and wood, hearts I find in my rambles on beaches and forests here on the Olympic Peninsula. I’ve been collecting them for decades, so that now my eyes spot something heart-shaped almost daily. It still amazes me that such an interesting shape is so common in nature. Sometimes, I’m even tempted to see certain heart-shaped finds as omens. It’s an odd thing for a recluse to collect, isn’t it? You’d be forgiven for assuming it symbolizes some lingering longing for human connection. I really don’t believe it does.
Continue reading...1. January 2009
A subtle pastel sky lures me outside, but it’s cold, with a light breeze off the Strait. Like a heliotrope that barely knows which way to turn, I set off on an afternoon walk to lift my face toward the scant sunlight and say goodbye to the year. Thanks to the tugging of the young moon setting dimly in the west, the beach is extra wide. Thin bands of clouds hover over the islands and the mountains, centering me in the famous blue hole. Of course I’m alone on the beach. With the temperature in the low 40s, the day doesn’t shout: Come on down to the beach—except to me. Cold never kept me from anything.
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28. May 2009
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