Winter Beach Study Reveals What We Often Don’t See

The camera is a sketchbook, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity.

Henri Cartier Bresson

A couple of days ago I visited the familiar and dear-to-my heart beach on the Atlantic 10 miles from where I live. I’ve been visiting and vacationing on this beach for more than 50 years, since the early 1960s. It’s another of those places that make the city where I live “home.” When you go back that many years a place truly becomes so firmly etched in your memory and consciousness that it lterally becomes a part of your body and soul.

I may not feel the same excitement as arriving there for a week of summer vacation full of hot windy days on the beach soaking up sun, enjoying sea breezes on the porch, having seafood platters at a local restaurant, sitting out on the beach near sunset listen to waves coming ashore, and taking long walks at any time of day. But as I began my short walk this past Saturday along this same stretch of beach where I’ve walked for so many years, I felt a familiar sense of peace listening to soothing waves gently breaking over the shoreline, much as I had those distant decades ago.

Only now each walk on the beach seems constrained by time whereas it once seemed to stretch out forever in the summer sun. The experience of being on the beach now has an almost too-fixed and familiar feel, but that’s okay because once again I feel “home” in this sanctuary of memories. Nothing can ever change that.

It was about an hour before sunset but there were almost no clouds over the ocean to light up gradually as the sun disappeared beneath the waves and nearby marshes. I have always looked down into the sand on the beach as much as I’ve looked up into the sky at the beautiful cloud formations, especially in summer. But in the absence of a dramatically colorful sky, I focused all my attention on the tiny details of the grand mosaic that is the beach, with its washed up shell fragments, small bird feathers and all manner of flotsam and jetsam. I love looking for patterns in the sand along the beach as the water departs at low tide, leaving behind small pools of water and slivery streams that merge with the oceans as the tide goes out. The whole becomes an artist’s palate, not of paint, but objects, some almost unrecognizable, that tell the story of what the receding tide has left behind.

This is why my camera was pointed down toward the sand, roaming over tiny objects instead gazing up at the sky and clouds. Here is what I saw on that 30-minute walk:

https://www.flickr.com/gp/camas/A16J8D