Beach Trash

By Gail Travers | on July 19, 2023

SHOW AND SHELL: The author makes garlands with shells she finds during her beachcombing jaunts. Using ribbon, twine or yarn, her creations are gifted to family and friends. This activity came about after she took over her late mother’s seashore house and became more comfortable with managing it. (Photos courtesy of Alison Mack)

I’ve been coming to my family’s house in Brant Beach, which my grandfather designed and had built in 1936, since my first summer (1960). Probably the first beachcombing I did was on all fours; I imagine that I ate some of what I grabbed, as my own kids did.

Over the years I’ve sought various treasures: skate egg cases, jingles, starfish, fused oyster shells, colorful clam shards, sea glass, conch shells in beautiful states of decay. Several remarkable souvenirs of ocean life have seemed to find me when I wasn’t really looking for them.

When my mother died in 2009, it largely fell to me to keep our seashore house going – something I felt unprepared to do, and for which I had little time and energy to spare at that stage of life. Beach walks gave me the chance to grieve and think and breathe.

I began a habit of picking up a smooth shell fragment or pebble within the first few minutes of each walk that I would fidget with along the way: my worry stones. They came back in my pockets and accumulated on my dresser; eventually I put them in a big glass jar. These days I only add to the jar, which is nearly full, every so often, but I look at it a lot. It reminds me that I can cope.

As my comfort with running the seashore house increased, my beachcombing focus turned outward. I chose shells to connect with ribbon or twine or yarn into garlands that I gave to family and friends. Pictured here are some of them.

When my friends Sarah and Lizzi Swan invented a game in which they planned fantasy travel adventures budgeted with sand-dollar currency, I did my best to supplement their treasury. And I started picking up trash, beginning one spring day after a big storm, when Tony and I found the beach hideously littered. I have a photo of us with our haul in May 2018, having gathered as much as we could hold.

Alison Mack and Tony Kinney display their haul of beach trash after one big spring storm.

Later that summer, in notes I made for a memoir that I’ve since set aside, I wrote:

I can’t ignore plastic garbage these days, though perhaps I once did. I don’t know if there’s more of it around, but I do know that it catches my eye just as surely as a perfect sand dollar: I can’t walk past it without having to decide whether to pick it up.

Some days – often after a storm – the shoreline hosts a polymer parade: bottles and caps; plastic and foam cups; fully inflated balloons as well as their battered husks, trailing still-bright ribbons; fluorescent toys and their remnants; a rainbow of unidentifiable chunks and splinters.

I try to remember to bring a bag when I head for the beach. Some days I’ve emptied it into trash and recycling bins several times over the course of the 5 or so miles I typically walk. When I forget the bag, I improvise.

I’ve learned to make “trash tacos” by grasping smaller fragments within the folded “tortilla” of a mylar balloon, chip bag, or other sizable scrap of plastic film. I stuff it as I walk along, and when I can barely hold it together, I climb to the nearest trash can, make a deposit, and start over. Sadly, some of my walks have yielded half a dozen such creations.

Tchotchkes from the author’s beach sweeps rest on a corner shelf in her Brant Beach home.

Sometimes I find things that are too cute to throw away, such as kids’ little plastic figures. They join the legion of tchotchkes that decorate our seashore house.

I know our occasional trash-picking does nothing to solve the systemic problems that choke the world’s oceans with plastic and litter its beaches. But I also know that each ribbon-trailing balloon and plastic bag I grab might otherwise kill a turtle or bird or fish or dolphin or whale, so perhaps I’m saving a life or two.

That’s the thought that keeps my hands full on my beach walks these days, along with the satisfaction of seeing a patch of sand adorned with nothing but sunlight and true beachcombing treasures.

Alison Mack lives in Wilmington, Del., and Brant Beach.

You must be logged in to post a comment.