Eggs on an Alien Shore

Doug and I knew the ocean was close.  We could hear it.  We could feel it on our skins.  We could probably taste it too, but I don't remember that.  We couldn't see it though...Until we stepped over the crest of a soft hill and found ourselves looking over a landscape neither of us had ever seen before.  We were camping in the Olympic Peninsula.  I don't remember exactly where any more.  What I do remember is coming upon a beach littered with eggs of all sizes.  Well, not really eggs.  But egg shaped rocks, made smooth and elliptical by their constant tumbling in the ever advancing and receding waves of the ocean. 

Most of the rocks were light in colour, many of them white, giving the feeling of a bleached landscape on an alien shore.  Both Doug and I had paused, then gasped quietly when we first stepped into our positions overlooking this new environment.  One of us might have muttered "Oh, wow."  We began to walk atop the rocks. I bent down and picked up the first of three rocks I was to carry home.  It was white and unbelievably smooth in my hand.  The next was more grey, but equally velvety to the touch.  I wanted a third.  Something different from the other two.  The one I finally found was rougher to the touch, but still remarkably round; darker, but still muted; larger, but not so large as to not fit into my pocket.    

I brought these three rocks back to our campsite, and placed them on our picnic table, not too close to the black bear warning sign stapled prominently in the center.  As we ate our hot dogs cooked over a campfire, I played with them, placing them in different configurations.  I tried to imagine how long it had taken every rock on that beach to become so similar in shape, despite their varying size and constitutions.  I wondered where they came from originally, and how they landed on this stretch of beach.  I wondered how long it might take them all to turn to sand, or if they ever would.  Many of these questions were answered the following day at the visitor center,  but for that evening, I relished in the mystery and the newness of the experience.