The in-laws have taught me to beach comb. Only partly on purpose.
FIL taught me the his sea glass points system. He’d walk the beach with the grandkids and they would hunt with him. One for green, two for white, all the way through blue to brown to the rarest: red. He’s only found a few red fragments in a decade. . You get a bonus point for the smallest shard.
It takes me a few weeks but I developed the knack. Started spotting the way the light moves different. Throwing away quartz and seaweed flakes in frustration but I would get a few bits per walk. My neck aches after looking down and rocks and dogs in the cold for an hour.
A storm can bring new items. Sometimes there are shells. Dozens of starfish crawling back towards the water. Other things I have to research what are.
MIL grew up around here. I ask what the gross balls of jelly are. I keep mistaking them for sea glass. “Sea gooseberries,” she tells me “When we were kids we used to bring a bucket down here and fill it and then play with them.”
You don’t have to be taught noticing the odd fish and seaweed. You must learn by practice looking at things rather than the beach as a whole.
You also must practice looking at the beach as a whole.
I have only been walking this beach for two years but I can see the movement. Learning about nature is an interest of mine. There is no learning of what is without learning what used to be.
The golf course is falling into the ocean. We come across a marker. “That was supposed to mark the end of safe ground,” There is a pipe sticking out of the cliff. Sometimes we find golf balls. Sometimes we see a little less of the course.
Bits of chalk have recently been unearthed. A take a couple home. Try to draw with them. I remember I never liked chalk and pastels at school.
Chalk was once plankton. Their bodies crushed over millions of years into stone.
I take home bits of tile for the garden. There have been homes swallowed by the sea. Perhaps they come from there. I know the mound of rope must be from ships. The plastic waste from anywhere.
Another treasure is witnessing. Dog walkers warn each other then a seal is on the beach. We had ours on the leash when we spotted this pup. I'd only seen them in the wild once before I moved here.
Sometimes I find nothing of value to me. Sometime my dog-stuff bag is weighed down by fragments of roof tiles.
There were no butterflies on the grass by the carpark this summer. When I dry the dog off I try not to think about the common whites I saw last year. Learning beach combing is learning to look. Learning what there is. There is no learning of what ‘is’ without learning what used to be.
