A Sea of Glass I

Terry L Anderson

 

Jan’s second passion (after collecting antique silver spoons, transporting them across country and testing TSA security lines) is beach-combing for sea glass.   It’s not quite as challenging as looking for diamonds, Japanese glass floats, escaped fish-net floats or even agates, but a bit harder than looking for drift wood.  She has this rule, that a trip to the beach cannot end until she has found at least one and to help hold beach time under six hours she is not too discriminating on what qualifies.  Ideally sea glass is well ground (no sharp edges) and frosted from its encounters with sand and of course colored glass is a great plus, but even fairly clear glass or glass that you can manage to pickup without a life-threatening cut may qualify – recently used beer bottles even if broken to use a weapon in a drunken beach fight do not qualify (she has her standards). 

 

We have this canonical house rule when on Whidbey – it has become elevated almost to a religious duty.  I believe that it was originally adopted to ensure that we not get so bogged down in house decorating, yard work, deck scraping and painting, antique shopping (including spoons), or even sitting around the fireplace or sleeping, that we forget to take advantage of the wonderful location of our home.  We can look out the window and see waves, boats and herons on Dugualla Bay, but one should not take easy access to the water for granted.  So the rule is: every day, when staying on Whidbey, we must visit a beach or other water access – rain or shine.  Kayaking, walking a beach, riding on a ferry or sail boat or walking out on a dock or wharf all count, just looking out our window does not.

 

The problem comes from combining these two rules: water access daily, at least one piece of sea glass per visit. We arrive at a beach and I excitedly scan the watery horizon for boats, the sky for eagles, (or the shore for good looking other walkers) and stride off energetically down the sand or across the rocks, believing that exercise is at least part of the purpose.  Then I look back and notice that Jan is three or four inches from the path onto the beach, head down gazing deeply into the sand.  I walk another few steps, repeat my scan for interesting views and again look back – Jan is now maybe six inches from the entry.  I had foolishly believed that “beach walking” implied actually putting one foot ahead of the other at least once a minute or so, but for Jan the term includes standing on one foot while sweeping the other periodically back and forth (imitating a pendulum) moving sand and small pebbles (to hopefully uncover buried treasure).  I wait in vain for her to catch up.  Now I have the difficult decision, not un-fraught with marital implications: do I get my exercise with a brisk walk down the beach, enjoying the many spectacular views, the crisp but salty air in my nostrils, the cool breeze (or gale wind) on my neck, the sound of lapping waves and the crunch of my shoes on the sand reaching my ears hoping to complete my round-trip before she looks up from the sand, or do I make brief forays up and down and across the beach returning periodically like a puppy, or do I totally give up on my exercise and multi-sensory extravaganza and help in her hunt for her Holy Grail. 

 

I have tried the later approach, foolishly believing that once the rule was satisfied she could be released from thralldom and accompany me further along the beach, but apparently sea glass is a form of addiction.  It seems that satisfying its initial hunger only leads to even stronger cravings.  One piece is never enough.  The next piece might have a nicer tint, might be larger, might have a more gracefully sculpted curve or attractively frosted translucency.  The gulls and eagles, the ships at sea, even the red and yellow hues of the sun setting into the waves go unnoticed as the sea glass demon is upon her.  So I inevitably revert to one of the first two approaches always conscious that at any moment she might manage to shake the demon, notice my absence and make me pay for my neglect of companionship.

 

Take yesterday for example (written last Christmas).  The day started clear (unusual in December) and calm (none of the 40 mph winds that lashed the islands a couple of weeks ago) but cold (only a few degrees above freezing).  It looked like our beach walk would be pleasant but perhaps warmer if we waited until later in the day.  We waited too long.  By early afternoon, the sun was gone, the air had warmed little, and a light drizzle had dampened the ground – but still no wind.  We decided to use one of our “escape clause” beaches.  When conditions are not great, our rule is minimally satisfied if we do a short walk on the small beach within view of our deck, on Dugualla Bay, using the Dugualla Heights community shore access (next to the club house).  At high tide one can walk only a couple of hundred feet without wading or climbing a bank (but there is often sea glass in that hundred feet).  Low tide only exposes more mud (no sandy slope into the water here).  But when we arrived we were surprised by the length of nice pebbly beach.  Evidently the storms of the last few weeks have remodeled our beach.  The tide was lower than we had expected and there was twenty or thirty feet of sand and pebbles.  The driftwood logs that we usually have to climb over to enjoy even the short beach, had all been tossed up onto the bank behind the beach.  The drizzle had stopped and I anticipated a nice walk.  I started down the beach, looked back and found Jan a few feet from the boat ramp, head down.  I waited a few hours and after finding no movement I elected solution one – I decided to explore the newly accessible beach and see if it was possible to get all the way to the dike at the west end of Dugulla Bay, maybe a quarter mile away.  On our walk down from the car we’d seen two herons flying over the water.  Now I found them wading in the shallow water a little ahead of me.  Just before rounding a small bluff that would block my view of the beginning of the beach I looked back and found that Jan had moved a few yards further but still head down.  So I continued out of her view (hoping to return with my absence unnoticed).  As I approached the herons, one flew away, but the other let me approach within about twenty or thirty feet before flying to along the beach behind me.  The new beach was great.  There is now no problem walking all the way to the dike end.  But I began to worry about how long I’d been gone.  Was Jan’s addiction sufficient to keep her insentient during my entire absence or was I in trouble?  I decided to return.  The clouds blocked the spectacular view of snow-capped Mt Baker that we sometimes enjoyed when walking this direction on the beach, but I met my heron again, who this time chose a floating log a little off shore as his sanctuary.  When I rounded the bluff, to my horror I found that Jan was walking toward me, several hundred yards from the boat ramp, apparently totally free of her thralldom.  I could see no evidence of rage at my absence but I still feared the worst.  Happily when I approached, she seemed calm and only wanted to tell me about her success at finding several nice pieces of sea glass.  She feigned interest in my discovery of the fabled route west to the dike and we walked together (still quite slowly since one of us still drug one foot on each step to expose new sand) back to the boat ramp.  And I seem to have paid no penalty for my uncompanionable absence – yet.

 

My success at finding sea glass without even trying amazes her.  Many times, even when I choose option #1, I return with as many pieces of sea glass as she has found.  I never really look for them, but just walking briskly down the beach, I spy them out of the corner of my eye.  When I do, I always stop and pick them up, hoping that presenting them as a gift will serve as a peace offering, expiating my sin of uncompanionship.  It often works. One day, when Jan was out visiting antique shops, I was left no means of transportation to the water (my kayak is of little use until I get to water, although I have thought of putting roller skates under it).  I decided to walk down to our “last resort” beach to satisfy the rule.  The tide was in and very high, so I had a very short beach to walk.  I had not intended to look for beach glass – that rule applies only to her, but I found eight pieces without trying in only about 20 feet of beach, and two were colored.  I decided to keep them and present them to her and got a very nice kiss for my effort.  But such luck in finding sea glass when she is not along is rare.  For some reason most times when I go to a beach without her, I see none.  Maybe her presence on the beach attracts the glass.

 

I’ve never been clear on the ultimate goal of this task. What will happen to this sea glass? She must have thousands of pieces by now.  Each piece is placed in a bath of water and Clorox immediately after arriving at the house and soaks overnight.  But after that they seem to reside in a box.  I am not sure if they will be made into jewelry, some form of collage or other art, be hung from some future Christmas tree, or simply remain in the box as some form of retirement savings (saving for a rainy day?).  The current hoard seems innocent enough, but when we move to Whidbey full time and visit beaches 365 days a year (the rule!), I fear the impact on our storage space.

 

After we’d returned to New Jersey, I found Jan a couple of pieces of “sea glass” on the trail half way up Mt Kimble.  Of course “mountains” in New Jersey wouldn’t even be considered a hill in Colorado or Washington.  It is only 690 ft high, but the presence of sea glass must mean that this is a geological uplift area or that the sea level was once much higher.

 

Christmas, 2007 (written Dec 2006)


A Sea of Glass II

Jan Anderson

 

The trouble with taking a beach walk with Terry is: there’s a high probability of it becoming a beach march complete with goals to be met and formulas involving covering the greatest amount of distance in the shortest amount of time.  Records must be kept so that each successive return to the same beach requires an extension of distance with a reduction of time.  The only allowed exception to the distance/time rule is a substitution of height for distance if there is a high bank that can be scaled in the far distance.  Close proximity to a high vista point doesn’t count.  It must simply be scaled before the beach march and not counted in the original formula. 

However, high vista points are valued because that allows the use of Terry’s portable GPS gadget, so he can tell exactly where on earth he really is.  (Personal observation of surroundings is just so old school.  A digital readout makes the experience so much more real.)   But I digress.  Back to the march, er walk.  Participants are allowed to take their eyes off the destination marker (usually a bluff or a minute speck marking the vanishing point on the horizon) to make sweeping glances at the landscape to mark anything of interest as long as the participants keep moving. 

After much trial and a few errors, I have discovered there are ways of dropping out of the march without too much objection from Terry.  I have found that inviting Terry to join me in moving slowly and making intense observation of the area surrounding our feet (which of course is necessary for the discovery of beach glass) spurs him to abandon the idea of having a partner on his training exercise and soon he is happily well down the beach by the time I am ready to move forward. 

Being a compulsive beachcomber, I must admit my main goal is to add to my sea glass collection. But, I have discovered many other rewards for the slow meander. Nature’s metronome of advancing and retreating waves sets a pace for me that is measured in slow motion.  I imagine it as the earth breathing deeply: in…..out…..in…..out, and soon I feel a stillness settling over me, a deep relaxing trance that invites me to slow down and contemplate. 

I start to wonder about the lone, starkly white pebble I see surrounded by black stones.  What journey lifted it from its mother lode to lay it at my feet, an immigrant among a different sort of rock altogether?  How long did it take to arrive?  Will it remain through another tide?  Is this place at my feet a brief resting place on an endless migration?  Or has it reached its final destination?  I will never know.

I notice two blue heron off shore in the middle distance and wonder if Terry is aware of them.  I know they are very aware of him, as one moves further afield as he advances.  The braver of the two refuses to give ground.  I wonder if they are passing through, where their rookery is, and if they have discovered fish close to shore.  I watch them resettle as Terry moves past.  I turn my attention to the sand.  I find shells that have been tumbled and ground by the surf so that only the thickest parts remain, exposing the inner spiral structure.  (A miniature staircase for a fanciful mermaid perhaps?) 

I become aware that the light has changed; the sky is now a paler wash of the same dull pewter as the water.  Some clouds shift, and now parts of the water are burnished silver. More clouds are gathering on the horizon.  In an hour or so the setting sun will light them from beneath.  It will be a dramatic sunset.  I make a note to pay attention at sundown.

I stop a moment and realize I have advanced about half the distance that Terry has.  He is still moving forward, so I continue to walk, looking for more treasures.  I find the mother-of-pearl crust of an oyster that has lost its outer shell.  When I pick it up I discover a black stone trapped, but it has not been there long enough to become a pearl.  I try to shake it loose, but it is cemented there by secretions that had started to cover it where it was in contact with the shell.  I put it in my beach bag to show to Terry when he returns.  It is an interesting artifact, but not one that will make me rich.  As I move forward I find Cockle shells that when cleaned make great votive candle holders.  They go in my bag too.  I find beach glass: several pieces in fact. 

My quest fulfilled, I look up seeking a driftwood log to sit on and rest.  Perfect timing, Terry is on the return leg of his exercise jaunt.  When he reaches me, imagine my amazement and delight to discover that he too has found some sea glass for me.  Apparently he has the eyesight of an eagle to be able to spot them without breaking stride. 

The return trip to the car finds us walking side by side.  I pick up my pace and he slows down so that we can compare notes on what we have experienced.  The distance to our car is covered quickly.  We have satisfied our beach walk mandate for the day.