Beach Grass

Beach Grass

Who can forget those family trips from the inland to the coast if taken while a child if so fortunate? Not me. A world away from the gray concrete and mercury vapor lights which dominated Seattle and much of the surrounding area where I lived in the 50’s through 60’s, a trip to the flat-surf beaches of Washington State brought nothing short of an exotic change. Although local accommodations were sparse, little one-room cabins once populated the shoreline by the dunes. These were always a joy to spend summer days at.

These little cabins were never really clean by hotel standards, for example, if an oyster shell on a sill or in a shower and a thin film of sand on the floor are things you consider as inappropriate. Oh, but how appropriate! A few of these rough gems still exist from Long Beach at the southern end of the Washington Coast up to the edge of the Olympic National Park to the north. Names such as Grayland, Westport, Ocean Shores, Moclips, and Kalaloch were familiar to me when I was young.

“Beach Grass” was taken in the dunes along the Long Beach peninsula on Washington’s coastline. Roughly 20 miles long, The Long Beach Peninsula touts one of the longest continuous flat-sand beaches in the world. Indeed there is an archway that is inscribed with “The Longest Beach in the World”. This may be debatable, but it would take most people a full two days or longer to walk the length of the Long Beach Peninsula. Miles of soft sand and a couple of rocky headlands can stifle many from undertaking such an endeavor. The native grasses are very wheat-like.