Walk on the Westport Side
For more than twenty years I have taken my trash and left it at the beach. My anger, frustration, despair, and grief have all littered the pebbly shores of the Long Island Sound. That marine muse, in all her sandy and salty glory, has neutralized those woes, and with Atlantic alchemy, turned them into joy.
Before my ex and I moved here with our boys in 1997, my sister, already in residence, had extolled the virtues of Compo Beach and its legendary playground. With two- and four-year-old boys in tow, it alone sounded like enough of a reason to move here.
What I couldn’t anticipate then was the extent to which these two half-mile stretches of concave crescents of sand, forming a diamond of beach that is the crown jewel of our town, would provide not only recreation but solace.
Pilgrimage
At first, I brought the boys to frolic in the sedate surf and create civilizations in the sand, but I soon found that ambling in the anaemic waves as they struggled to reach the shore grounded me deeply. Unshod, the soles of my feet connected with the damp earth, which reconnected me with myself. The tides’ predictable flux gave me — as a young mother, a grieving adult child, a struggling divorcee, and an empty nester — an anchor in every storm. I never left the beach feeling worse than when I arrived, no matter how much inertia or sloth tried to keep me tethered to my couch and stressors.
Broken Glass
As if the natural beauty of our Connecticut cove didn’t suffice, and in keeping with my Type A, purpose-driven personality, I made the quest for sea glass each sojourn’s goal. I no doubt picked up the habit from my mother, who strolled her beach on Hutchinson Island, Florida, searching for shells to turn into magnets and paperweights for friends and family. In lieu of mollusk husks, I opted to pick up garbage to compensate for the mental detritus I deposited. After all, as a recent CBS News segment pointed out, sea glass is nothing but trash. Our coastline conspires with the tides to take the bottles that revelling clboaters discard and smooth them into jewels.
I now walk, head curved like an archer’s bow, aiming for the mostly brown and green, sometimes clear and aqua, and rarely deep blue, lavender, or even red, trinkets. I fill oversized mason jars from Home Goods, sorted by color, with the finds that chronicle my years and life here in coastal Connecticut. They are as much a part of my legacy as these words that I leave.
Zen and the Art of Beach Walking
This pursuit of tangible tumbled fragments of glass and has taught me so many important lessons. Trite, maybe. True, undeniably.
· The Real Reward. With these words I will surely jinx myself: I have yet to walk the Compo curve (the name derived from the Paugussett word Caumpaug meaning “bear fishing ground”), without finding at least one piece of glass. While this delights me, I step foot on the sand, like the British troops did in 1777, fully prepared for failure. Because, unlike those intrepid soldiers trying to quell the upstart colonists, for me, it’s the journey that’s the prize, not the glass. These ambulatory meditations lift my spirits, flood my system with Vitamin D, and fill my lungs with bracing ocean air. I delight in the company of other beachcombers and frolicking canines in the colder months, and toddling castle constructors and sunbathers in the warmer months. The sojourn suffices. What we collect along the way is icing on the cupcake of life.
· The Tao of It. I often suffer from “monkey mind.” Surely the serene scenery would suffice to quell this perpetual tape that plays on an endless loop in my head like a mechanical whack-a-mole competing for attention. But the scavenging is the reagent that intensifies the visit’s myriad benefits. A circus side show of thoughts always tries to sidetrack me from the main event. This foraging is the silent mantra that allows me to home in on the elusive goal of homing in on one goal at a time.
· Opportunity Cost. I recall sitting in on Microeconomic Theory as an undergrad as professor Jeurgen Fleck discussed the concept of opportunity cost. It’s pretty simple, really: “Opportunity cost is the value of the next-best alternative when a decision is made; it's what is given up.” I must choose one narrow path on each walk. It agonizes me to contemplate the road not taken because my two feet and two eyes can only cover so much ground. Especially at low tide, there is a wide swath of possibility. The water’s retreat reveals rows of small stones that act as dreamcatchers that trap the glass once the waves have washed it up. Every step I take eliminates an infinite set of other zigs and zags. No matter the treasure might miss, I must necessarily commit to the choices I make and accept their consequences, positive and negative.
· Don’t Settle. How often have I settled for some poor facsimile of what I really wanted because I don’t like to make a fuss or simply didn’t value myself enough to insist on what I deserved? This particular pursuit teaches me to be picky and insist on excellence. Sometimes a shard that has caught my eye is still shiny and sharp. Just broken glass; not sea glass. Not smoothed enough by the waves yet to merit space my collection. I return these immature fragments to Neptune’s finishing school of briny froth to further refine them, sacrificing immediate gratification for future, fuller fulfilment.
· Practice Makes Perfect. Malcom Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule notwithstanding, practice does make perfect – or at least pretty damn good. I have clocked at least twenty times that number of hours wandering up and down these shores and the experience has undoubtedly honed my technique. “How do you find so much glass so consistently?” ask the curious. “I look,” is the simple answer. Those who join me often lament their lack of booty as they gaze up at the beach’s beauty. Who can blame them, but the glass isn’t in the sky like Lucy’s diamonds; it’s hidden in the sand beneath our feet. My gaze is diligently trained downward. I have developed a sixth sense for the size, shape, texture, color, and reflection that lead me to each piece. Early on, the search yielded many false positives: algae, rocks, splinters of driftwood. My hit rate now approaches 100%. Philip Stanhope, the fourth Earl of Chesterfield eloquently described this sensible approach to goals in general: “whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.”
The Old Lady and the Sea
For more than twenty years I have taken my trash and left it at the beach. For more than twenty years I have taken trash from the beach that alchemized into treasure.
This is so wonderful, Diane! ❤️