The Rambling Writer: Of Pebbles and Porpoises…
- Sara Stamey
- October 22, 2022
Join Thor and me as we gather beach pebbles from nearby Pacific Northwest beaches and enjoy the lively sea creatures.
…of cabbages and kings — No, wait, wrong story. This one takes Thor, Bear dog, and me to a favorite nearby hike, from Rosario Beach, along Bowman Bay (top photo), and to Deception Pass. We were trying to escape the horrible lingering wildfire smoke blanketing our county. Driving about 45 minutes south, we found mostly blue skies and some fabulous beach pebbles to fuel Thor’s new obsession of rock polishing. We started at Rosario Beach, under the watchful eyes of the Ko-kwal-alwoot totem honoring the native woman who sacrificed herself to insure her people would not go hungry. Salmon are sacred and essential here.
The hike is sometimes a scramble around the steep, rocky headlands of the coast, but flattens along the curve of the Bowman Bay beach, where Thor went wild collecting pebbles for his new “obsession.” With our day packs a bit heavier, we proceeded to climb another steep headland due to high tide, down, and then up again to a headland overlooking Deception Pass. Here early European navigators hoped to find the fabled Northwest Passage, but were fooled.
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5 thoughts on “The Rambling Writer: Of Pebbles and Porpoises…”
This rock obsession is a terrible thing. I can hardly take my eyes off the ground.
I had this for several years when I was a teenager, had a rock tumbler, oh boy. Still have the rocks. Then more recently, about 10 years ago when Lake Michigan was low, I collected driftglass. Our lakefront has a lot of big rocks put down by the ACE to protect the shore from erosion, and sand was exposed below that, and all the bottles drunks throw into the lake were smashed and subsequently smoothed … I think I have 60 lbs of driftglass now. Fortunately the lake rose and submerged those little scraps of beach!
Jen, that sounds really interesting! Would love to see some of those rocks. Too bad the beaches disappeared.
Just don’t trip!
I’ll dig ’em out and photograph some … they’re on my front porch somewhere (!) or maybe in the office closet (!) or maybe in the library closet (?) …
The coolest by far are the petrified honeycomb / wasp nests.