Beach Sand Jar Progress
At the start of the year, Mike and I began collecting sand from all the beaches we visited and poured them into a tall glass jar, layer by layer. You can see the original post here where we started the project. This was our progress as of mid-year:
We're now in November and the temperatures are below the freezing point, which means we're not hitting the beaches much right now. But we did manage to visit a few in late summer and well into fall, so it seems like a good time to recap the year and see where we'll likely end up at the close of 2017.
For Mike's birthday, we drove down to Provincetown for a three-day weekend with friends. Our final day was spent stretched out on Racepoint beach. As you can see, it was picture perfect. More photos and whale tales from that adventure here.
Racepoint Beach, Massachusetts| July 31, 2017.
Next on our beach tour was a long drive down the coast to my old home town of Asbury Park, NJ. When I lived here, I used to step off the train from working in gritty, exhaust-filled NYC and breathe the salty ocean air into my lungs. It was heaven. Being able to walk to a beach in five minutes is a pretty sweet deal. I hope to one day have that luxury again. More pics from our Asbury trip here.
Asbury Park Beach, New Jersey| August 26, 2017.
After that, work got insanely busy and September passed us entirely by. By October things settled back down and I was ready for a mini staycation. Mike drove us up to Wingaersheek Beach in Gloucester for some R&R.
Wingaersheek, Massachusetts| October 7, 2017.
I took a bajillion photos of the big rock jetties. If you click the panorama above, you can expand it. It's pretty beautiful there.
It's impossible to not look cool like you're in a rock ballad music video when you're climbing around on these things.
The sand on Wingaersheek was filled with mica or some other metallic particle. The ocean seemed to shimmer with it, it was mesmerizing to watch. We decided that Wingaersheek probably translates to "glitter beach." Later I looked it up and it's a corruption of the earlier Dutch name "Wyngaerts Hoeck" which was derived from "Wyngaerton" which meant "vineland". I like Glitter Beach better.
Who needs sea salt hairspray when you can have the real thing?
And then we thought we'd run out of time for beaches, but our friend Ed invited us up to his home in Stockton Springs, Maine which sits right on the coast. The water is very still there, and the shore this far up is mostly pebbles. But there is sand here too, and we collected some during our visit.
Stockton Harbor, Maine| October 29, 2017.
Which brings us up to date. We hit a total of nine beaches in 2017. Here's what the jar looks like now, as of November 15th:
From top to bottom:
Asbury Park Beach, NJ
Stockton Harbor, ME
Wingaersheek Beach, MA
Racepoint Beach, MA
Key Biscayne, FL
Walden Pond, MA
Cranes Beach, MA
Rye Beach, NH
Hampton Beach, NH
Best free souvenir ever? Absolutely.
UPDATE: Since posting this, I’ve received a lot of questions on the sand jar. Mainly, people want to know if I used glue or some sort of binding agent to keep it from mixing or shifting. I can answer that: I’ve used nothing at all! Just a big heavy glass jar and lots of sand.
You guys, sand is HEAVY. And it is compact. And gravity is amazing. I’ve simply poured each layer in the jar and given the jar a little side-to-side shimmy to make the sand level in the jar. But that’s it. I don’t pour glue in or tamp it down or anything. The weight of the sand presses down and each layer keeps the layer below firmly in place.
As proof of this natural magic, I’ve moved house TWICE since creating the jar. Each time, I simply picked up the sand jar, got into the passenger seat of our car, put it between my thighs, and rode over to the new house, then placed it on the mantle. It’s never budged an inch. The sand will never mix unless you tip the jar on its side. It’s HEAVY AS FUCK. It probably weighs 20 pounds.
So go make a sand jar. Pick a nice heavy glass container and put it somewhere it won’t get knocked over. Then have fun filling it up!
