Invisible Beach’s 3 Claims To Fame/#2 Driftwood

Story by John Vonderlin–but his friends call him “Dr. Science.”

Part II

Hi June,

When I first started taking the long hike to Invisible Beach, to see the colorful pebbles, I noticed a nearby area where a number of rafts of small driftwood were gathered. After I had photographed and collected a few handfuls of pebbles, I walked back and checked out the piles of small driftwood strung out in sinuous linear patches by the receding tide’s waves.

I immediately noticed that a good proportion of the small pieces were nicely rounded, many with unusual and pleasing shapes. Already having a large collection of bigger pieces of driftwood at home, I gathered up enough to fill my backpack and headed home.
So it went, every time I visited the beach to gather pebbles, I’d see the driftwood piles in the same embayment and grab a few hundred more.(#1)

I also began to theorize why they were there and what was causing them to be so rounded. They were quite different from the usual piles of small driftwood you might see elsewhere. I began to call this part of the beach, Nature’s Grand Tumbler.

My theory was that the two rock promontories on either end of Invisible Beach, tended to restrict the normal flow of beach-stranded driftwood further southward.

…more…

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