Broke Bottle Beach

It seems I’m in the habit of rushing to finish writing and posting a blog entry before I break my streak. I will just roll with it.

I did something different today. Something I’ve wanted to do for years!

Astoria Park has been a lifeline for me. My walks have been especially restorative and clarifying through the COVID years. Around the park, through the park, along the water. It’s beautiful all over. I ran my first 5k on the track. Years and years ago, David Bluvband and I shot Dairy Affirmations on the lawn by the massive arches supporting the train tracks. The park holds a lot of special memories.

I love the walk along the riverside edge. When the water laps up on the shore and pulls back, it creates a very peculiar sound. The chime of one million shards of broken bottles tinkling on against the rocks.

Today I carefully walked across the boulders jutting against the concrete wall that separates the sidewalk from the shore ten feet below. I made my way to the sea glass beach. I filled my pockets with smoothed over shards of clear, green and blue. I let my fingers run through my collection, recreating the sound that drew me down here. I discovered the flat, round bottle bottoms served perfectly well as skipping rocks. I thought about how beautiful of nature to turn decades of drunken litter into a quarter mile of jewels.