Last week my husband and I took a vacation to the Oregon coast. We like to go there during low tides or after storms to look for agates and rocks of all sorts. We hadn’t been in a long time and we both were very in need of a break. Plus, this was our dog’s first road trip to the ocean.

On one of our walks we saw a young man building a structure out of driftwood. He was busy digging a large hole in front of the structure, tossing out sand and oblivious to our passing.

We see people doing things like this with driftwood, typically building a simple pile of sticks for kids to play in, or to sit in while they have a small fire. But the things this young man built were different. For one thing, there were several of them along the beach. For another, they were complicated. Good sized, intricate, wood woven into arcs and organic shapes, and clearly more like artwork than just playing around building a camp.

On top of that, we noticed other things as we walked in the vicinity. Closer to the waves there was a simple circle of stones, already getting covered in sand. There was a slender piece of driftwood upright in the sand, decorated. I took a photo, which is below, but you can’t really see the details. There were feathers, shells, pieces of beach grass, and stones decorating the wood. I felt uncomfortable after I took the photo, as if I’d gone into someone’s church during service and started snapping pictures.

My husband spotted a ring of sand. It may have been a hole originally, like the one we saw the young man digging. But the tides and waves left only a hint of what had been, and left patterns of movement in the sand that showed what change looked like. It was like a subtle reminder that nothing remains constant.

I’ve been thinking about those structures since we got back. Why was the young man building so many? Why did he build them at all? Did he see them as transitory art, or were they just something to do with the things he found on the beach? Did he want people to use them? Did he sit back later and watch the afternoon crowds and how they interacted with his creations? Or was he, too, transitory, and moved on without looking back?

That led to more questions. I wondered if people saw the creativity, or just saw camps. I wondered if people respected them, or destroyed them. Did kids play in them and dream adventures? Did homeless people sleep in them at night?

So many possibilities. So many stories.

I wonder if that young man knew he would make imaginations soar? I hope so.

Oh, and Corbie loved the beach. The picture below is him with the wind blowing his ears up. He was the most well-behaved dog we have ever traveled with and we made sure to pay attention to what sticks he played with.