The Living Beach – August 1, 2017

Beaches are indeed like living creatures: they grow, they die, they feed, they starve, they respond to stress,
they adapt to change. They are among the most mysterious, alluring and
implacable features in our environment.

Excerpt from The Living Beach

What a difference a year makes! Or maybe not so much…. it’s now exactly one year since I started doing monthly comparisons of the changes at our local beach. Although the beach itself changes from day to day, the cycle from season to season is the same. Lots of rocks in the winter and spring after the sand washes away, and then the sand comes back to shore in the summer and fall. Walking on the beach now, you’d never guess that there are so many rocks below your feet covered by I have no idea how many –illions of grains of sand!

For one last time, here’s the beach at low tide today….

And here’s a three-way comparison – July 1st, today, and August 1st one year ago…

And just to see how the beach changes in six months, here’s the beach on March 1st…

I have no idea why the sand comes to shore and then gets washed away and then comes back to shore and then gets washed away again year after year. Mother Nature is mysterious that way :-) But it certainly makes the beach a fascinating and ever-changing place – guess that’s why Silver Donald Cameron calls it The Living Beach :-)