#singing beach

[timmurleyart]

Moonrise over sea and rocks. 🪨🌕

[sixminutestoriesblog]

Singing Sand

I thought we’d do something different today.  Let’s take a trip across the world and back in time.

The story goes like this:

The desert heat was dry, first soaking into every crevasse and fold of clothing and then become a heavy weight there, pressing down from above, pressing in from the sides.  As the day progressed, the heat soaked into lungs, breathed down through covered noses, filling the body, baking the travelers from both the outside of their bodies and now the inside as well.  Their shadows ran long before them and then trailed, even longer and darker behind them.  Wind blew off the sand dunes and the grit of that sand seeped, like small, persistent fingers, past barriers of cloth.  The only sound was the sighing of the wind over the sand, the soft steady chime of the bells on the camels blankets and the occasional clicked tongue from one of the camel’s guides.  It was like traveling through time, backward and backward again into the past.  It was like being caught in amber, a moment that stretched on and would never end, never change to the next moment.

At first the sound might only be the wind.  A low, solemn sound, coming from somewhere far away.  A droning rise and fall that vibrated through the air, that hit the chest and shook persistently through the lungs and heart there.  Slow, as the travelers seemed to grow nearer, the sound clarified into low chanting, sometimes louder, sometimes fading, following a song that  changed without warning or pattern.  Low, always vibrating low, filling the air with the continuous, sad song.  

It was a song that Marco Polo recorded in his journals and one the locals knew well.  

A song sung in the quiet, secret, hidden places of the desert.

We’re talking about singing sand, a rare, naturally occurring phenomena that science can - almost - explain.  

Singing sand can happen on beaches but the most impressive songs come from sand dunes lost in the desert. Ancient people described the noise as moans, drums, chanting or thunder.  Marco Polo, traveling along the Silk Road, wrote that the sounds were caused by evil spirit and sounded like musical instruments or the clash of arms.  The songs aren’t just limited to the China either.  Singing sand can be found world-wide and no two places will sing the same song.  According to science, the ‘song’ of the dunes and beaches are caused by very specific types of sand grains, ones with a silica, caught in very specific circumstances, rubbing against each other as they move.  The makeup of the sand influences what sounds it will produce, with small sand grains making the softest sounds and large grains vibrating more bass.  Sand grains of different sizes will create different harmonies while uniform grain size creates uniform sound.  And though the sand usually has to be very dry to sing, a small amount of water can apparently change the pitch of the song.  The ‘singing’ is believed to happen when wind or footsteps start the sand sliding, the avalanche causing minuscule layer to rub against minuscule layer of sand until the grains resonate and create sound.  Singing sand can be found in the US, Africa, Wales, Hawai’I, China, Japan, Australia and the Middle East - anywhere the sand and the climate is right for the music to start.  While science is still trying to figure out, exactly, how singing sand works, the people of the past already knew.

In Dunhuang, China the stories say that the area around its famous Crescent Moon Lake was once mountainous and full of temples.  One day the chanting and singing from the temples woke a Yellow Dragon Prince who was sleeping in the nearby desert.  Angry at being woken, he covered the entire area with desert sand, entombing everyone in the temples.  The sounds you hear in the region are the spirits of those still trapped below the dunes, eternally chanting their songs.

The Bete Grise Beach in Michigan also sings.  Local legend says that a Native American woman lost her lover to Lake Superior and every day after he drowned, she would stand on the beach and call his name into the wind coming off the water.   The sand still calls for him to this day and whenever it is disturbed, the long dead ghost of the woman whispers her lover's name in memory. The sand, it is said, will not sing if you remove it from its beach.

We know that people sing. Whales sing. Birds sing. And now, apparently, even the sand has something to add to the choir.

[clarabosswald]

Singing Beach, Manchester

Martin Johnson Heade, 1862, Oil on canvas. 63.5 x 127 cm

[spitfire27x]

[timmurleyart]

Drawing in the sand. 🏝🦀🐟🐡🦐🐟

[returntonature04]

Singing beach, Manchester-by-the-sea, MA

[librarienne]

Singing Beach Manchester-By-The-Sea, MA

[briarmoon]

Beaches

Singing Beach

The seagulls never cry When they’re soaring through the sky; They’re listening to the sounds of music.

They can hear the soft murmur of the seashells And the melody of the blissful sand.

The ocean sighs with each rolling wave, As I’m cradled to sleep by the sand’s song And your sun-filled eyes.

Each breath, each wave, Rolls in with every caress.

Sparkling starfishes Surround my sunburst dreams As saltwater stings my eyes.

You wipe the sand off my cheek And the breeze blows my senses away.

Crane Beach

The water is as crystal clear As your shimmering blue eyes And the intentions of your salty smile.

From the shore, waders appear to walk on water, Standing on sandbars miles out at low tide.

You whisper in my ears As soft as the peep peep of the piping plover. Your love has won me over.

Between the sandbars we baptize ourselves In warm salt water pools.

We walk out to the sandbars during low tide Hoping we’ll get lost in each other, If only for a while.

Standing on top of a sandbar miles out It’s our turn to walk on water.

© Copyright 2016, By Briar Moon