The Correlation between Sea-Glass Hunting and Story-Telling

Let me begin by saying that I did not develop a knack for sea glass searching entirely on my own. It is a bit of a family phenomena. Growing up on the shores of Lake Michigan, my family and I would spend every single summer on the sandy dunes of Long Beach, Indiana. This was the birth place of my sea glass fascination. From the time I could walk, I was encouraged to scour the beach for the small, opaque remnants of the past, long forgotten and turned over to the tides. To others, it might just be recycled trash the waves have kicked up, but to me, each piece contained a magical story about humanity.

Every shard of sea glass my family has collected over the past 20 some years has gone into these grandiose candle holders up at our family beach house in Long Beach, IN.

The reason I love collecting beach glass so much, is largely due to my story-telling nature. You see, with every piece I discover, it basically becomes a mental exercise in which I get to embellish a tale from long ago in the past surrounding the circumstances of my pretty, little water relic. For example, a green shard could have come from a 13 year old boy hanging out on the beach in the summer, hoping to fit in with some older boys by chugging his first beer from a bottle, then hurling it into the water. Or maybe that green piece came from a handsome, youthful couple, chipped off a bottle of champagne drank in celebration of their recent engagement. A brown nugget could have been the work of a homeless alcoholic, stumbling along Lake Shore Drive and littering the water with the last droplets of his vice and the glass containing it. A dark blue piece, perhaps, the remnants of a candle, whose smell brought a mourning woman peace and comfort in a time of loss. Do you see how many endless options there are? Sea glass is truly a story-tellers delight!

Sea glass is one of the most meaningful treasures in my life. During my study abroad experience in Bilbao, Spain, I made a point of collecting sea glass from every beach I travelled to, both the big, renowned beaches such as those in Barcelona and San Sebastian, as well as some of the smaller, fisher port villages along the water, like Sopelana, Lekietio, and Gorliz. I kept them in a mason jar and paper macheted pieces of paper with the names of all the beaches I had collected from, around the outside of the container. I gave it to my dad for Christmas that year. He is the main reason sea glass has taken such an important meaning for me, in my life, and why it has become such a therapeutic activity for me over the past several years. Sea glass, to me, is representative of the people and places I love most in this world, and hunting for it on the beaches of the world will never fail to turn the wheels of my brain and bring me joy.

Sea glass serves many purposes. It inspires, it reassures, it decorates and most importantly it connects us in the way that sneaky way garbage can sometimes do when it washes back up in unexpected places.