Yesterday my partner Gayla and I spent a bit of time at one of the small public beaches that is close enough to our place to be a quick drive away. We live in Canada near the northern shoreline of Lake Erie. From that beach we can look across the relatively small and shallow waters of Erie and, on clear days, see the shoreline of New York, a small wedge of Pennsylvania, and possibly a bit of Ohio.
This beach has a small lightly tended woody park between the thin cottage service road and the water. Tall oaks, shag bark hickory, massive-leaved sycamore, and old wind swept cedar form a dark canopy that always feels like an inviting tunnel of life with the lake’s horizon at its end.
At the beach, we are slow wanders, observers, foragers, and collectors. Having the privilege of a shoreline we can connect with throughout the year shows us the multitudinous faces of place and time. The beach is never the same place. One day deep with drifts of small to medium rocks and fossils, another almost barren with just sand reaching far out into the water. Lakes have subtle tides but more so they have winds and currents and churn that push and pull at the shore and both reveal and remove each day.
I enjoy the purely ephemeral nature of the beach and of Nature in general. As my own small part of that big-N system, I have sometimes made marks or assembled forms at the beach knowing that their time was limited both by the elements and by other visitors to the same spaces.
Like my drawings, these “beach ephemerals” are a form of mark making. I want to make a mark that sits in the space and time of that set of moments and reacts to what is there and the phenomena of the day.
Occasionally I enjoy the feeling of making a mark in the wind.
Or at least to be part of the experience of shaping the course of the wind for a moment and even the mild ego in challenging the wind in a kinetic dance for balance.
This play with the elements and the bits and pieces left behind by both natural processes and human influence is a way for me to connect with myself and the place. It also helps me recognize play as a feeling in my body and not just as a concept. It’s a powerful thing.
It always feels good but sometimes it’s more analytical than other times. On the best days it’s just truthfully free and it’s just about my hands and eyes being active and my mind, body, and emotions playing along.
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Yesterday on the beach I didn’t make anything. I just observed and picked up a few small fossils. The light was cool and alive and the water not placid or rough. The leafy scent of autumn mingled with the tang of the lake.
And in the low golden autumn light, I saw the oak leaf above making its own drawing in the sand.
Maybe the best ephemerals are those mostly never seen or recognized. Wind-drawn scribbles and arcs with a blade of grass as the wind’s tool.
Not that I feel any need to compare what I make with what Nature makes on its own. But I suppose I am. Nature’s unintended marks have that thing that we as people chase. Unburdened by criticism, need, or shame, Nature makes marks and patterns, adds and removes, without intent or thought.
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Try it!
Go into a natural space and react to it. Make marks or forms as long as nothing is harmed. Don’t worry about permanence or any time beyond the time spent at all. Just try to move in a space and connect with what you find around you and what your body and eyes respond to.