...A hummingbird atop a Coyote Bush turns its head just enough to catch a sun ray on its throat and throw a red sequined light at me. Another hummingbird reflects only an iridescent green back. A small fluffy gray bird preens its feathers while perched atop a park trail sign. With a gentle breeze ruffling its head feathers, it takes on a jaunty, tousled look, like a rogue playboy set apart from the other birds spaced evenly on the wire fence top. Spider webs in the grass glisten with beads of moisture left from the rain. Their perfectly woven center funnels stand ready to capture the unwary insect. A raven’s hoarse caw ushers me along the path to the beach, but my shoes are already soaking and make squeaking sounds with each step I take on the wet ground. I think I have sopped up the moisture underfoot as well as the spirit of the day and I need go no further on my beachwalk.

The birds have come out of their rain-sheltered hiding places and I have left the shelter and comfort of my home to bask with them in the sunlight so welcome after a stormy morning. It is enough for today...

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Storm Birds 2

...I think about pioneer women who used fragments of cloth to make quilts. Each piece of material had a history. A bit of worn out dress, a child’s outgrown clothes, bright color swatches traded with a friend or neighbor, memories lovingly quilted together to form a warm, serviceable and meaningful cover, a blanket with history as well as purpose. The sewing of the quilt, itself, was a shared activity.

I think of the fragments I collect on my beachwalks as shards melding together to form my beach quilt. They are pieces of experiences broken and scattered, of pain and uncertainty, of adventures and joy and, most of all, they are reminders of a love that pervades life at its worst moments as well as at its best. As my collection of beach fragments grows and is stitched together with insights and relationships, I grow. But unlike a cloth quilt, my beach quilt is forever in the making, a continuous process that is ever rewarding and always hopeful. Today I go home with a new fragment in my pocket, and some new ideas to connect with the past while I piece together the present...

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Fragments

Scraper

...While historical fact confirms the existence of people thousands of years ago living where I now live, finding and holding one of their tools helps me to feel this knowledge. As I grasp the sturdy quartzite scraper, I merge with the past, becoming an extension of human habitation along these shores. Someone, many lifetimes before me, sat upon this same bluff top and looked across the ocean as I do now. She, too, must have walked along the brush-covered edge, perhaps following the same ancient drainage channel that I follow to the beach. She carried the scraper as her knife, just as I carry my jackknife in my beach pack. I tighten my grip on the stone as I try to feel her strength and picture her strong fingers using the scraper to cut abalone meat from its shell. I see her kneeling as she fills the natural holes in the shell with beach tar. Placing the abalone in her new bowl, she follows the path back to her encampment to share her wealth. I smile as I think of how I, too, sometimes carry home an abalone shell. But mine is only an ornament and the abalone meat I eat comes from the market...

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...Today I am trying to figure out what it is that makes a gnarled piece of driftwood full of imperfections, so appealing to me. Is it the subtlety of grain or color or tortured shape that turns an old piece of wood into a thing of beauty? As my eyes search the piles of beach debris for the unusual, it dawns on me that it is the complexity of all these elements together shaping each individual piece, that captures my interest. Wind and weather directing its growth from a tiny seed to its development into a tree, its journey from the soil of its birth to its beach resting place, and finally, its destiny as firewood, ornament, garden decor, or trash to be hauled away.

As I continue my search for interesting wood formations, my mind wanders and I begin to compare the imperfections of wood to gnarled and aging people. They, like the driftwood, have been changed by experiences and time, but have survived with scars of remembrance. Slowly I realize it is the development of character that appeals to me and ultimately becomes a kind of beauty. It is character I’m looking for in the driftwood, character developed over a long journey, just as I look for character in people who have lived full and challenging lives, molding the clay of experience into living artifacts of lasting value...

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Driftwood

Secret Garden

...On my beachwalks, I expect change. I look forward to each day’s difference and appreciate its unique characteristics. But because I am creating my garden, I expect it to stay the way I design it. And so it continues to defy me with wayward growth I can’t control. It has taken me a long time to realize I must think of it in the same way I view the beach. The basic structure remains constant, but details are never the same and it is details, that make it all so interesting.

Through the years I see seasonal patterns and changes in both my garden and the beach. I’ve learned that both are a process more than a result. I now understand that if I could make my garden perfect once and for all and it stayed that way, I would very soon grow bored and tired of it. Just as if my beachwalks were the same every day, I would soon become disinterested. It is the process of growth and discovery which is stimulating and challenging...

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...As I sit digging my heels into the loose granular material of the beach, dribbling it through my fingers, I feel at peace with myself and lulled into contentment. My thoughts today inspired by the sand beneath my feet, help me to know myself a little better. Sandcastle dreams provide an entry into aspects of my human spirit. I am reminded of so much I don’t understand and never can. But it doesn’t matter, like granular material sorting itself into piles, life gets sorted out whether I understand or not.

I would like to stay and play in this pleasant place, but I realize it is time to go home and begin the rest of my day. After all I was privileged to have the luxury of an early morning walk and some playtime in a really big sand box...

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Sand

Crystal Cove

...Shark egg cases, commonly known as mermaid’s purses capture our attention, and we compare notes on two varieties. The spiral form belongs to a Hornshark and the rectangular one is from a skate. These small leather-like pockets wash up on the beach after tiny babies have hatched from eggs inside. The first time I found one buried in a clump of seaweed, I carried it home and spent hours searching my books before I was able to identify it.

I pick up a small triangular arrangement of calcareous plates from a sea urchin’s mouth and she reminds me that it, too, has an interesting common name. It is called Aristotle’s Lantern because of its small cage-like shape. Together we unsuccessfully search her natural history books trying to identify a black, tree-shaped branch, which reminds me of a sea fan, but neither of us knows its name. The more we talk, the more I renew my own curiosity and desire to know about these offerings left on the beach by ocean waves...

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