July 25, 2014

For this week's Blog of the Week, we chose Kane Hollingsworth's My Sandy Disposition. Kane is a Charleston magazine intern spending her summer break in the Holy City. She found beauty in the mundane with her outlook on sand tracked into the home— something most consider to be a pain. Stay tuned for more guest blogs by up-and-coming journalists like Kane. 

So, because I put off my gen ed (that’s general education) requirements until my senior year of college, I am having to take an online class this summer—Geology 105: Violent Earth. It explores natural hazards and disasters. Riveting stuff. I was sitting on my front porch yesterday reading about coastal erosion and, more specifically, the loss of sand and the decreasing sand supply of our beaches. My textbook was going on about how nature gets rid of a lot of the sand, how some is blown inland by wind or beaten down by water into finer grains that are washed back out to sea. It’s carried away by rip currents or picked up by a storm.

I thought they must be joking, right? Nature? Shoot, I’ve got enough sand in my sheets to build my very own sand bar on Sullivan’s Island. If I finally got around to vacuuming out the trunk of my car and the beach chairs that I’ve stowed there, I could fill enough sand buckets to build a sand castle fit for a queen.

Those poor beaches are being raided by beachgoers like me, and I almost had the mind to feel bad about it, but what a strangely sweet sensation it is to be overwhelmed by all that sand. It’s almost comforting to kick your shoes off in someone else’s house and feel that grainy film that is just as much a part of Charleston houses as the faint blue on the ceilings of the porches here.

So I’m sorry, Geology 105, but I’m keeping my sandy sheets. When I wake up in the morning, it’s like the sand is quietly reminding me, “Hey, you’re at the beach.” And after all, ain’t life better at the beach?

Photo from follybeach.com