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Stinson
This beach is where you can fill a bag full of white, brittle sand dollars, the star emblazoned on the center. There is always smoky green sea glass half-buried under sand and driftwood, and dried husks of kelp and sea cucumbers, which once danced to the waves at the bottom of the Pacific. Sometimes the driftwood is big enough to sit on, hollow and gray and thick; the mast of a ship that sank a hundred years ago. There are perfect curved white shells with thick, uniform ridges. At first you pick up every one you see, even the ones with little bites taken out of them, the ones that have jagged earthquake cracks running down the middle. But by the end of the day your bag is heavy, and you sort through the shells, and you leave the ones that are not quite as perfect in a pile at the end of the beach, the place where the ocean meets the lagoon and tall, sharp, dry grass pushes through the sand, and where there are pebbles that nip at the soles of your soft feet.
Sometimes you find smooth, gray rocks with perfect, round holes in them; Swiss-cheese rocks. Then there are shells with that thin layer of green and silver iridescence on the inside that flakes off like old paint if you are not careful when you try to rub the dried sand off. They used to have mussels inside, and they smell like heavy salt, and like dead flesh. They are very beautiful, but they are fragile. If you are not careful with them they will turn to dust in your bag; they will crumble under the weight of so many white shells and Swiss-cheese rocks.
When you are very young you crouch in your red and blue swimsuit on the dense, wet sand where the thinnest tongues of waves lap against the beach. You wait and watch for the wave to reach, then as it leaves you wait for the bubbles to form. You dig as fast as you can to catch the sand crabs before they burrow too deep. One time you decide that you want to keep them as pets, and you put them into a blue plastic bucket full of soft, dark mud and take them home. But then the mud turns to cement and when you dig them out, the crabs are already dead, their bodies broken by the weight of dry sand. After that, you see their quiet bodies, their tiny orange hearts, still and cold, as you fall asleep to the rhythm of crashing waves.
When you are older you sit on the dark, night sand in tight jeans, a green 1940’s Air Force pilot’s jacket wrapped around your thin, huddled body because the zipper is broken. You watch as the white foam on the crests of falling waves turns into a row of shiny metal shopping carts, pushed down the beach by ghosts, and you laugh, because it is beautiful. That same night your friend drives his mom’s minivan too far out onto the beach and spins the wheels, burying the tires in cold sand. But the gray-haired locals appear when the bar closes with rusted pick-ups and ropes and chains and tow it out.
Another night you walk fast down the beach, so fast that you cannot breathe, your heart beating so hard that you can hear it; dark, red muscle pulsing against white rows of calcium. You need to walk to the end of the beach, where the sharp grasses push up out of the bleached dunes and the sand is pebbles. You are following the moon, you want to touch its round glowing eye, which stares down at the Pacific, setting the choppy, dark waves on fire with white light. You realize that you are walking on millions of tiny, ancient creatures; dried kelp and sea cucumbers, tossed and broken brown-and-green bottles, bleached blue whale skeletons and shark’s teeth, shipwrecks and dead pirates and shards of Pangea, and they are cool against your feet. The air is salt and wet; it is heavy and bright in your lungs.
From my Reed College senior thesis, In This House Where We Were Both Outsiders , 2006.