I find myself slowly and stiffly walking across Caspar Beach in California. It’s the kind of crippled condition you get after pulling weeds or planting flowers in your garden all day except that I didn’t pull any weeds or plant flowers. I have to thank my friend Mary for my condition because it’s all her fault. She is the one that hooked me on the addiction that lead to this state.
You see, Mary makes jewelry from beach glass. You know, pieces of broken glass that end up in the ocean and through the action of the waves, abrasion of the sand and time transform the originally sharp jagged pieces into smooth uniquely sculpted gems.
A few years ago she mentioned the idea of collecting beach glass to me and now I can’t go to a beach without looking down. I have been to many beaches since then and have found very few pieces. So, it has become a bit of personal quest to find beach glass.
Then we landed on Caspar Beach. I got very excited when I found my first piece, ecstatic with the second piece and positively addicted with the third. And, I wasn’t the only one. The whole family was stooped over with their eyes fixed on the sand. We were all addicted.
We scoured the beach, then as the tide went out, we scoured the newly exposed sand until the waves started to come back in. Of course, to retrieve the pieces, one has to stoop, bend and squat. With the intense concentration, one does not notice the muscles being used or recognize they are ones that have not been used like this in a long time. The recognition comes the next day when one can’t walk.
That’s when we decided it would be a good idea to do something else like taking a drive into Mendocino to check out the art. The historical logging town from the early 1900‘s became renewed as an artist colony in the 60‘s. It has many quaint shops with an eclectic collection of art and sits on a bluff above the ocean. A slow stroll through town is just what our legs needed to recover from our previous day of treasure hunting.
right: The Lil’ Dude converses with the art in Mendocino.
We also took some time to visit the Cabrillo Point Light Station, one of the many that sit stoically along the California coast. The half mile walk out to the light house was set among hillsides of natural grasses and signs warning of Mountain Lion habitat. Fortunately, we only saw a few deer. We arrived just before sunset and were treated to a brilliant orange sky.
To stretch our legs out more, we took a long walk on the beach to a place called Fern Canyon which turned out to be a fun place for the Dudes to explore. As the name suggests, the canyon walls were covered in ferns and it was filled with birds, salamanders and toads, heaven for a boy.
right: The Hippygeek helps the Lil’ Dude across the river.
We did go back to the beach several more times hoping to find pieces of abalone but just came away with more pockets full of glass. Each time I said “enough is enough” and each time I stuck a few more pieces in my pocket. The Dudes had a great time cleaning, sorting into colors and picking out special pieces to use for art projects.
When it finally came time to move on, our legs were feeling a little better, we renamed Caspar Beach, “Beach Glass Beach” and we added another five pounds to the rig. Guess what my friend Mary will be getting for Christmas.
above: Cabrillo Point Light Station at sunset.
Beach Glass by Amy Clampitt
turning over concepts
I can’t envision, the honking buoy
serves notice that at any time
the wind may change,
the reef-bell clatters
its treble monotone, deaf as Cassandra
to any note but warning. The ocean,
cumbered by no business more urgent
than keeping open old accounts
that never balanced,
goes on shuffling its millenniums
of quartz, granite, and basalt.
It behaves
toward the permutations of novelty—
driftwood and shipwreck, last night’s
beer cans, spilt oil, the coughed-up
residue of plastic—with random
impartiality, playing catch or tag
ot touch-last like a terrier,
turning the same thing over and over,
over and over. For the ocean, nothing
is beneath consideration.
The houses
of so many mussels and periwinkles
have been abandoned here, it’s hopeless
to know which to salvage. Instead
I keep a lookout for beach glass—
amber of Budweiser, chrysoprase
of Almadén and Gallo, lapis
by way of (no getting around it,
I’m afraid) Phillips’
Milk of Magnesia, with now and then a rare
translucent turquoise or blurred amethyst
of no known origin.
The process
goes on forever: they came from sand,
they go back to gravel,
along with treasuries
of Murano, the buttressed
astonishments of Chartres,
which even now are readying
for being turned over and over as gravely
and gradually as an intellect
engaged in the hazardous
redefinition of structures
no one has yet looked at.
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