Beach beauties
By Steve Myrick
Published: October 16, 2008
They are perhaps most precious not in a jar, or a bowl, or a pendant around the neck, but lying unfound in their natural beach beauty. They were tossed in the ocean decades ago as the flotsam and jetsam of a culture that never dreamed we might outgrow our planet. They return in tiny bits, tumbled to a rough polish in the cackling surf pebbles of a steep beach.
Finally tossed up by the tide, they catch the shallow rays of the autumn sun, relaying their blue, green, brown, and white hues like some kind of tiny, fleeting prism. If the eye is relaxed, not fixated on the search, but open to the possibilities, it will see them. A practiced hunter doesn't even bother to bend down for an opaque flat pebble or a deviously shaped bit of green seaweed, but pounces instantly on a glowing rounded shard of a cobalt bottle.
Sometimes a find is tossed back, as far into the waves as possible, where a decade or so will refine the smooth hollows and sharp edges, ready to be discovered by another beachcomber. It is trash, turned to treasure, by time. We should all be so lucky to have our sharp edges polished by Martha's Vineyard waters.
