Beach Scenes

“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea.” - Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach” - Henry Beston

“Among the many thousands of things that I have never been able to understand, one in particular stands out. That is the question of who was the first person who stood by a pile of sand and said, "You know, I bet if we took some of this and mixed it with a little potash and heated it, we could make a material that would be solid and yet transparent. We could call it glass." Call me obtuse, but you could stand me on a beach till the end of time and never would it occur to me to try to make it into windows.” - Bill Bryson

NVDL: Bill, what probably happened - and something tells me you must have already thought of this (it just sounds cool the way you put it) - is that people discovered glass in deserts and on beaches and eventually realised: Hey, lightning did this. So if you add heat to sand you get this stuff. Not such a long walk in the park now was it? And there was a movie with a character who did stuff along those lines in Sweet Home Alabama.