Art on the Beach...

I’m awed by the natural beauty of shells. Look at this moon snail—is that not gorgeous?

Or this gaudy nautica shell?

Or this chocolate alphabet cone?

In addition to the shells themselves, the beach contains lots of art. Some of it nature makes herself. Here’s a pen shell that filled with sand and smaller shells.

Here’s another one. I guess pen shells and hearts go together.

Shells themselves are spiraling works of art. At the Bailey-Matthew National Shell Museum on Sanibel Island, I found this x-ray of a shell. The shell starts out very small. In fact, lightning whelks hatch wearing shells so small they could hide behind a grain of rice. As the snail grows, the shell shape never changes…the snail just keeps adding more material as its shell spirals ever outward.

Then there’s the art that people create. There’s something about being on a beach that inspires. Near our condo’s entrance to the beach someone (or a group of someones) got very creative using the materials at hand!

Birds…

Fish…

And of course no Beach Art Installation would be complete without a six foot alligator!

For many of us, things have been rough since January 20. Everything we warned about is coming true, so we now find ourselves in a living nightmare. To give you a much-needed escape, I leave you with this one-minute video on a Sanibel Island beach. It’s early morning, with a heavy fog hanging over the Gulf of Mexico. When you watch, forget the chaos around us, calm your breathing, and remember that we will get through this.

Thanks for reading.