Cobbles and Cathedrals

From scorching stones to sky-bound pillars

I grew up gazing at the Atlantic Ocean from my perch in New England. Beaches here run the gamut, consisting of three main types.

There are beaches deep in soft powdery sand: so soft, it kicks up like talcum, others layered with a gritty sand that stabs your feet like crushed glass, barely making the classification of “sand”. Others are covered with large, rounded beach cobbles that chatter with a mesmerizing rhythm when the waves roll over them. I call these mini boulders. They look like they were once massive granite boulders that eons of erosion pummeled to colorful hand-size, ankle-twisting torture.

As a child, I remember walking barefoot across a variety of beach coverings. The sting of the pinchy sand and the scorching hot beach cobbles remain fresh in my memory. This was my childhood coastline, the sand-grit-rock scenario repeating from the pine-lined shores of Maine through to the shores of Connecticut. Equal parts beauty and torture.

Then I went west and met Oregon.

When I visited the West Coast, I became spellbound and simultaneously envious of the spectacular, massive sea stacks that grace the shoreline, looking like a cathedral that was left unfinished.

The beaches I visited were wide and long and had soft sand, interspersed with whopping pillars of rock, remnants of cliffs that the ocean carved out. Magnificent! Sea stacks exist in New England, but are undersea, not coastal, as these beauties are.

At night, these pillars appear to be reaching up to the sky and actively communicating with the stars. The lights from the buildings in the distance attempt to shun the darkness, but only manage to mask from the inhabitants the nightly conversation between the Earth and sky.

I thought of the little girl back in New England who learned to run across the red-hot, shifting cobbles just to reach the cold Atlantic water, and what she would have thought about these pillars. I know she would have stood as I did, with her mouth open, hypnotized by the massive pillars and the stars they could touch. Thankfully, enchantment is something we never outgrow.

Clear skies and endless starlight,

Silvana