Castles in the sand (a variation)

You can always tell when the end of the summer vacation season comes to Folly Beach and everything begins to wind down. Sand castles pop up on the beach, way up near the dunes just at the high tide line where people think they can build a little fortress to last the night. It’s usually gone the next day. I think most of them are built by vacationers with plenty of time to expend on them.

Our beach is frequented by vacationing families in droves from all over the East Coast who come to rent the old and quaint, and new and ostentatious beach houses that line the Atlantic coast for miles. In off season there are only about 2,000 people who live year-round on Folly Island, but in summer there are many times that, especially on weekends. As I sit out on the beach, I watch them parading by on their late afternnoon, early evening walks. Mothers and grandmothers, teenagers, young children, old men, toddlers delightedly flaying their little arms as they run in and about the elders or take off down the beach. Sometimes it’s just teenage couples, hand in hand, or much older couples, hand in hand, and also, every age in between. People just like to walk along the ocean’s edge. I watch and observe, occasionally looking up from my book.

But this is the leavetaking time of year on the beach. End of August. Labor day approaches. It’s sort of sad to be the ones leaving the beach until next year. I remember when I was young and vacationing at the very spot I where I come to now, I felt the sad pangs of impending loss as we prepared to load the car and head back to New Orleans. So, I feel a bit of regret for them. I can come here every day. I am fortunate. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lingering wistfulness in the air that I sense palpably.

And people like to build sand castles. They come in all varieties. I love to observe the miniature fortresses and worlds that take shape behind the walls of sand and the turrets and moats. And knowing the looming ocean is just beyond those fragile walls. They are exercises in futilty. Ephemeral, crystaline, tiny broken-bits of seashell creations of varying imaginative complexity, usually childlike in their conception, but adults like to take part and build them, too. I did when I was young. I should do it again. I haven’t in so many years.

Now the other day, about 100 feet from where I sat, a family of four presided over a patch of sand. It was their domain for the afternoon. They were vacationers, one can always tell. The mother reminded me of someone out of a 50s sitcom. The father was stout and big-bellied. The kids, two of them, were the architects, engineers and laborers in the day’s sand caste project. I looked over from time to time. They were always industriously at work. Steady. Scooping sand, patting sand in place. Digging. Concentrating. The boy was about 15, a younger version of the father, minus the heft. His sister was 6 or 7, I am guessing. They were a team. It looked like they were having fun, but sand castle building is serious, intense work.

The afternoon wore on. The father and boy consulted about various thilngs. The mother presided over the gathering. Always there. The boy went down to the ocean to get wet. The father just kept standing around. Summer vacation does that to you. Life is lived from moment to moment.

About an hour later they left. I was stil lin my chair reading. The shadows were lengthening across the beach as the sun began to set. People began to drift away across the dunes. Soon I was the only one around. I got up to stretch and decided to walk over and look at what they had done. It wasn’t much to see. A bit of a disappointment. Sometimes these structures are rather imaginative and ornate. This one wasn’t. It wouldn’t win any contests. But who am I to say? They had fun, or so I imagined.

I wonder what kind of sand castle I would build. I think it would be tiered and multilayered with maybe a center courtyard. There would be tunnels and moats, of course. There would be towers and turrets, and a bridge over the moat. There would be a lot of fancy detail work. I’d take handfuls of wet sand and let is drip and dry into little spiked, sand-daubled towers. But it’s all speculation. I probably wouldn’t have the patience to sit there for hours in the sand and construct it. Maybe if there was a team of builders and a master designer and we had a goal to beat the incoming tide and stave off the encroaching water with higher and higher walls and mightier defenses. Isn’t that what we do in life?

The next night (last night) I saw another sprawling sand kingdom, maybe the last one of the summer. I didn’t have much interest. I was far more interested in getting comfortable in my chair and waiting for night. Soon enough, the evening descended, and with the darkness appeared a 3/4 moon that lit up the ocean and part of the beach in a dim-gold light. It got progressively brighter. I let the sea breeze work its magic. The steady sound of the ocean was the background music on this truly beautiful night. I stayed longer. The minutes slipped away. I soon found myself completely at one with my surroundings. Nothing could touch me, disturb me, or startle me from the deep reverie I was in. I was half in and out of the world. I wasn’t in any hurry to rejoin it.

I approve of the entry and its sentiments, wholeheartedly.

Kids seem to be more in communion with Nature than adults. It’s fun just watching them follow their whims.

I’ve not built a sandcastle. You see that little girl over there collecting shells, moving on to prod and poke the dead jellyfish, then to finally lie back and watch the clouds move across the sky? That’s me. 🙂 Perhaps I’d had enough futility exercises. I shed few tears for summer’s end these days – I am usually excited by all the color that I know is to come. The deer were moving yesterday.

HarpHill (2)

August 31, 2001

RYN-the visitation seems so controlling even now. Perhaps a title will come about with time. Do you have any suggestions? Always appreciate your notes.

I never really built much in the sand when I was younger. Someday I think I’d like to go to a quiet beach someplace and see what I would create.

I don’t know how many times I have watched my own children build sand structures on the beaches of Galveston Island. My sister and I did it on the beaches in Gulfport. She always had more enthuasim for it than I did. I am sort of a “shell seeker” or pretty rock, looking for a treasure from the sea that is more permanant. Summer leaving there is sad, summer leaving here is glad…

Why do you only wonder what kind of sandcastle you would build? Why don’t you build one? Why don’t you just throw aside all of the adult crap and build the world a spectacular sandcastle? What would such an endeavor do to your soul?

I think that this entry is remarkable, in the form and the content.It gives an impression of quiet and of wisdom.I love your way to look at the people. It seems to me that I see you seated on your chair glancing at children,above your book…:)

Summer is a sand castle with the ocean the world beyond. The sand castle is fun to build however much intensity may be put into it, but in the end it will be swallowed by the ocean. But a sand castle is its own version of Camelot: a dream of what was and can be again. If we could build sand castles every day, would they still be as special?

As for me, I love sand castles, but I’m like some of your other note leavers….I’d be the one wandering the beach looking for pretty shells and rocks….when I thought to look away from the ocean, that is! But I’d like knowing the sand castles are there.

“Exercises in futility,” has stimulated my thoughts. When one gets down to it, perhaps all is an exercise in futility, except the fullness of the present moment of life.We all move on to other forms sooner or later, like the castles. But awareness of present moments, the marvel of the creating & the creations, the witnessing & reflecting, all this holds great meaning for me.

Simple castles are the best.. you get the joy of builing (and the moats are the most fun) and decoration… i am partial to gull feathers and beach glass. And if you keep it simple, there is still time to walk on the shore or read or let the water tempt you in. The beaches are the best when the summer people are gone. Sounds sort of selfish, but to love the beachyou have to know the off season.

I can smell and taste the salt of the water, the breeze ruffling across the seagrasses. Oh! how I love the ocean. My sister just sold my cousin’s house that has been in the family since 1942. I was just sick about it. Sometimes the ones who get the good stuff are just stupid. I will miss my week-ends there. *pouts just a bit*

I was going to leave precisely the note that quieted left. I built a giant octopus this year with my niece. Not quite as elaborate as last year’s family of sea turtles, but we enjoyed it. The whole point of sand castles for me is not to build fortresses to stave off the approacing tide, but to put all that effort into something that will be gone in the morning. There’s meaning there too.

the bottom 2

August 31, 2001

i look for stones and shells so I can take pieces of the dream back to my reality….to have proof that i really had the moment given I miss the bay

RYN: Welcome – glad to offer a smile.

Wish you’d build that sand castle–bet you’d find it takes less patience than reading and you can be in this world and out of it, both. Love reading of Folly Beach–we once lived in a small town, small as that I think. Fond memory. mags

you are correct. the end of summer is quickly approaching. a depressing time of year i think we can agree. its always hard to leave a place that i love so dearly for 4 to 5 months. i wish summer lasted 10 out of 12 months. i hate to watch the population of locals decrease as well as our smiling faces. fall will be here, and there will be less and less to enjoy. *sighs* GREAT ENTRY BTW!!!

my sandcastle would be square shaped; with tall sand columns at each corner with a low wall connecting each column, and a moat that protected the fortress. within that moat, would be an amazing dome-shaped castle consumed with tunnels and paths, embellished by sticks and sea shells. thats how my sand castle would have been constrcuted.

I’m envious of your spot on the beach. I remember spending all day building sand castles, working meticulously on the buildings and walls, moat, a bridge if I was careful, etc. I stopped when, once when I was 16, I spent all day and, as we got ready to leave, I had the oddest thought that the day was a metaphor: people spend so much effort to create something lasting, and it all gets washed away.

Edelweis

September 19, 2002

*Sigh* Beautiful! I was thinking of a sandcastle like the one you describe, with tunnels and towers and bridges. I liked to build these when J. was little. He was such a joyful kid and he seldom had the patience to cooperate with me when I built a complex sandcastle, but he loved to carry water in his toy bucket and he loved digging of course! Now, I think, I wouldn’t be patient enough maybe. :o)

Beautiful entry!