Beach Cruiser
I walk the same Compo Beach crescent of sand as often as possible and have done so for the twenty-four years that I’ve lived here, searching for bits of washed up, worn out pieces of sea glass on the 1.3-mile roundtrip. That is at least ostensibly the promenade’s purpose, but in reality, it’s the journey that’s the gift. The surf-worn gems of brown, green, white, aqua, and sometimes – only sometimes – a rare lavender or deep blue or even yellow, are only the bling icing on the cupcake of the steps I take in the sand.
I sort and store the booty by color in larger and larger glass jars in my living room; like the hermit crabs I often see at low tide in the summer do, I have had to move the collection to ever bigger containers as it grows. Those jars of glass, their hues and edges worn by time and tide, represent all that’s passed, and the potential of what lies ahead.
I have walked through the death of both parents, my divorce, crises with both children, and just garden-variety anxiety on that beach. I have stepped light-heartedly through the sand lifted by moments of joy. I have tasted heavy humid air thick with salt, felt the sun pelt, braced against biting winds, and welcomed refreshing breezes.
These constitutionals calm and focus me as much as any mediation or yoga class. The familiar routine soothes as traverse the curve from end to end, making sure I tap my toe on one of the large boulders that make up the two jetties that enclose the cove. This part of the ritual echoes the touching of stones in other places: The Blarney Stone near Cork or the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. The trip feels incomplete without these sensory moments of closure. I recently walked with my now adult boys and noticed that they, too, touched the stones, almost reflexively, and I thought how lovely that they’ve inherited that habit, just as they will the glass I’ve collected.
I have never I regret the walk. The combination of exercise, Vitamin D, and invigorating sea air helps both headaches and spirits to lift. The sand and stones feel good underfoot, whether I’m barefoot or in snow boots. I watch children splash in the summer, and their canine counterparts frolic in the winter. It feels like just yesterday that I sat in that same sand and built castles with my boys, but just like the ocean floor transforms the sharp shards of glass into smooth tokens, so does time change both the shore and the forms of those who play on it.
The walk alone would have many therapeutic benefits, but for me it’s the search that focuses my attention and clears my mind. Just as I never leave the beach feeling anything but better, nor have I left emptyhanded. I hope that putting that in writing doesn’t jinx the trend, but I have found at least a few pieces of beach glass on every single walk at Compo. I have collected piles of sea glass in other, more exotic places, like the Ligurian Coast and on Barbados beaches, but none brings quite the same satisfaction as the homegrown variety. “How do you find so much? I can never find it!” people sometimes as after I post pictures of a day’s catch. I don’t know any answer simpler than, “I look, and I know what I’m looking for.” Surely I’ve logged the 10,000 hours required for proficiency. I home in so closely on the sand beneath my feet that sometimes I forget the fantastic vista before me. I know the nuances of the shore at different times and over time. One end of the beach used to yield much more than the other; thanks, no doubt to changing tides, that given has flip-flopped.
I missed very few things about home when I lived in England recently. Friends and family, yes, but while the banks of the Avon have their own special charm and meaning for me, I pined for the shores of the Long Island Sound. I hope my boys find as much joy and solace in the walk as I, and once the collection is theirs, I hope they continue to grow it on their own comforting beach walks.