l^ONSUCH 



I am sure if I had a microphone I could hear the 

 sand grains singing together. 



I once sat far out on the flat, white expanse when 

 the water was quite clear. I could feel the very 

 slight push and slack of the swell, but the surface of 

 the sand was troubled with a wholly different force. 

 When my whole being was impelled forward, the 

 crests of the furrows beyond me loosened, thousands 

 of glittering motes rose a little, then tumbled down 

 the slope and up the flank of the succeeding furrow. 

 I stopped calling them furrows and recognized 

 them as new and strange waves, tuned, like my own 

 actions, into slow-motion imitations of our cor- 

 responding activities in another world. I saw that 

 the sand waves were not stationary but were very 

 slowly advancing. In five minutes my foot was well 

 covered, and I visualized slow entombment if I 

 stayed long enough, the creeping up and burying 

 by the white arenaceous coverlet, — and I knew 

 how fossils must have felt in the making. 



It is not easy to see and study the creatures of the 

 sand from a six-foot distance. One must kneel or sit, 

 Again and again a sliver of sand slips from beneath 

 my hand, and a sand goby has shifted its position; 

 or as I walk along, an active snowshoe dodges my 

 step, and a great flounder undulates to safety. The 

 thought of gobies gives me a conceit of sorts, for 

 here in six fathoms I found sand gobies and reef 

 gobies but never tidepool gobies, and I realized 

 that I — a mere land-bound human — had de- 

 scended well below the realm of these shore fish. I 



44 



