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Close up of ocean-smoothed glass at Glass Beach in Fort Bragg, California

Hi there, im codalion, im the hands that make the necklaces. I don’t do much computer work (save facebook and the occasional game) but I felt compelled to post a blog about a place we went on a trip we took recently up to the north coast, our home away from home, our happy place.

Glass beach is a place (a beach obviously) on the northern coast of california, in fort Bragg, which I have visited many times over my 23 years, is located under some bluffs (which are covered in succulents, prairie grasses, and blackberry vines), at the end of a road on the north side of town. To one side (north) there are miles and miles of coast to wander, much of which belongs to mckerricher state park, my favorite childhood playground, and to the other side is (or was) a glass company.

To be honest I don’t know much about the place at all..its large, it looks like it most likely still functions, and its precariously close to the edge of the bluffs (I assume that in the past this was considered quite useful). My sister, who spent some time living up there as a young adult, has told me that she suspects this company dumped all of their waste materials right over the cliffs for a long time, too long of a time, although, how long Im not sure. As you climb down the bluffs to what looks from above like a pristine shining beach, it becomes quite clear that she is in fact correct (not that I had doubted it..).

What looks like shining polished pebbles turns out to be beach glass, more beach glass than ive ever seen anywhere else, and not just beach glass, but hunks of rusted somethings (engines, boat propellers, pipes, cables) and some other things which looked more concernely recent such as tiers, hunks of cement, a rubber boot, glass that hasent yet been polished, and even some things that look suspiciously like bones(yikes)..there is even a pipe jutting out of the side of the bluff which has some stinking water flowing out, creating deceivingly lovely little water fall (I call it a water fall because its falling water, as I heard a little girl defiantly point out to her dad as he tried to presaude her not to play in the water eventualy just took her in the other direction..a wise choice id say).the “rocks” that make up the tide pool area are less like rocks and more like hardened molten flows of tar, metal, hunks of glass, and what ever other wasn’t fit for the land fill (and some that was). This time around, it was almost exactly as I remembered it looking when I first saw it, except as an adult, it was a lot more disturbing.

Where the land meets the water, Glass Beach at Fort Bragg, California.

The worst part (or best part, as it was what inspired me to write this), was when I climbed up some of the “rocks” to the tide pool area, and became quite excited to find some anneomies (if you’ve ever been tide pooling, you know there pretty much everywhere to be seen, at mckerricher, you have to practicaly walk on a carpet of them to get to any decent tide pools), and it occurred to me that the reason I was so excited to find them was because with the way that the rocks looked, I hadn’t expected to find anything ( save some barnacles and kelp), it hadn’t even occurred to me that anything could live there, much less flourish.. Don’t get me wrong, the place is beautiful, the sunsets are amazing and the water is crystal clear as it rolls into the little cove. Its awinspiering, seeing all these man made things buried in smooth colored glass pebbles, rusting away.

The oil which occasionally seeps up from whatever is buried out of sight makes for striking iridescent flows as it runs down the beach, even the molten junk “rocks” have there good qualities, making you feel when your walking on them, as if you’ve stepped into some alternate world, post apocalyptic maybe? Or maybe just a world with too much garbage..my point is that its wondrous, you should go see it! But be aware that once the whimsy goes away its mostly just disgusting, not like “ ew thats gross” disgusting, but the kind of disgusting that you find in the pit of your stomach or making knots out of your intestines, the kind that makes you stop and think about what were doing, and how all of this apparently aw-strikingbeauty really got here.

- Codalion