This post began, the idea of it, last month when I was supposed to be working on the novel. I left a stub and then folded the post away.

I cannot believe it took me so long to actually look up the hardness of glass. It took Duck-Duck-Go all of two minutes to find everything I wanted to know.

When we search the beach, aside from agates and the odd diabetic needle or florescent tube, or the wonderful and rare fishing float, what we are really looking for is sea glass. I have wondered if glass floats more easily than stone, is its specific gravity is lower? Is it lighter and softer and that’s why glass is rare? It wears away?

So. Is glass softer and lighter than the stone and sand around it? Yes, my dears, it is. Glass is lighter than the rocks on shore, more easily tossed than rock. But more to the point, on the Mohs scale of hardness where higher numbers indicate harder material glass is only 5.5. Basalt is a 6 and quartz—those agates we find are quartz—is a 7. Each full number is ten times the hardness of the next lower—basalt is not half a degree harder but fifty times harder. The diamond at 10 can scratch o cut through everything, and is ten times harder than the next mineral on the scale, corundum. (Diamonds are brittle, but their hardness is one reason you might want such a non-blood stone in your ring, and the reason their industrial use is significant.)

Both the dark basalt making up most of the stony part of our shore and the quartz pebbles and sand are much harder than glass. Some of the flat-smooth pebbles I treasure have a buttery soft or almost glassy surfaced. Actual glass, regardless of color, is never smooth, instead feeling coarse or frosted. The gas is not polished by rocks and sand, but chipped.

We judge some of the glass we find “old” based on color and/or thickness. Some glass, even when sanded, is likely new.

I once found a large and recently broken piece of glass far out on the shore. I turned it point side down and pressed it into the sand. A couple of days later I actually came upon the same piece of glass. These days I would have picked it up and carried it home. The points were gone but it was mostly still shiny so I put it back. Later, I actually found it again and it showed sanding on the convex side. I left it again. Sadly I never found it again after that, but inside a week that glass was already frosted from the action of sand, which locally is mostly quartz. The “agates” take much, much longer since they are quartz and harder than most of what else is on shore.

This morning both Gary and I were tired but we went out anyway and brought home twenty bits of sea glass: 10 colorless, 6 brown, 3 green, and 1 wider-thin red piece from a fisher’s lightbulb.

We walked to the north headland and noted a large group of people gathered before a speaker. All in coats and boots and carrying buckets and standing beside a smallish seastack that is not approachable through the colder months. Starfish have recently reappeared on the dark basalt. Mussels and anemones and barnacles. Someone was telling visitors how to harvest shellfish.

This did not bode well.

I walked over and listened for a time. The group leader was telling the group there were no worries about harvesting mussels. “Unless there’s a red tide, take whatever you can reach.” They would need to cook them and “fill your freezer.” They could take “however many you want to process up to the limit of 76, and the next day they will all be back.” He repeated that: “The next day they will be back.”

“It will take years,” I said. “It’s a lie that they will be back in a day. They’ll start up again if the season is right, but it takes years!” I walked away. I don’t think that man knew anything about mussels. They are male and female, reproduce sexually, and after the eggs hatch the larva can drift for weeks or months. After that it takes them a year or more to reach harvest size. A lot of wildlife depend on mussels.

Eighteen people taking their limit off that rock, the only place within a half mile that has mussels, would strip the entire north side.

Starfish would struggle. Black oystercatchers, normally on that rock in the morning, were elsewhere today. And I am annoyed.

Friends have asked us lately if we don’t find the city noisier or more dangerous than the coast. The ocean is loud, sometimes very loud, the rain striking the skylights might wake us up. The rentals feature a continual stream of new people. Some are friendly. In Portland we have grown used to screamers in the night, the sidewalks are half-blocked by tents, but at least most dogs are leashed. (The exception on the news was the loose pit mix that attacked another much smaller dog, leading to a $3k vet bill. Then the same dog bit a baker, 35 puncture wounds. Police did nothing at first, but it was on the news and Portlanders were upset. The dog is now in custody.) We avoid being at the beach on weekends in order to avoid the crowds, loose dogs, abandoned poop bags. This morning there were crowds, dozens of people on our shore. It was supposed to rain, but alas, the weather is lovely. We had to go to the city earlier this week, on Wednesday, and then meant we came home yesterday morning.

Crowds in Portland are to be expected. I shouldn’t be at the beach on weekends.