Creeping of the Cross Sea

thoughts on waves & erosion

By Chaia LeviPublished 2 years ago • 3 min read

A cross sea. c. 2009, Canon Elph.

A cross sea is as nebulous and accurate as it sounds: when crossing waves collide. Near perpendicular - angular at collision, a wave comes from over one side and another wave the other. Dangerous rarity propelled by winds and rhythm never ending, the clash and retreat calms at low tide and grows spectacular at high. Getting between the waves means no return.

12 summers ago at low tide there was a triangle of sand to wander down, down as close as you could safely be to the colliding waves which created the tip of this wedge to witness it. Summer after winter after summer, the sand skittered away; inland, to sea - wherever. The changing shore keeps true to its name, changing from habit and people’s neglect.

Lamentation of erosion still leads to erosion; denial more-so. Anything but change will be done in response to houses falling in the sea. Lamentations and homes on altered dunes took away my walkway to a sea.

The waves steadily creep up sandy beach, claiming the fragile liminal space connecting and protecting the terrestrial from the aquatic. On this stretch there lies the sloping beach we are familiar, until it reaches the abrupt vertical exposures of dunes. Dissected right down, beach grass’ fibrous mesh of roots keeping sand from collapse and the ghost of what was. At its feet: more of the sloping beach, high tide narrowing it until nearly merged with the steep, cut dune before allowed to take its own shape again. Shadow permanently lies across the stretch of sand, casting some relief in high summer and disquiet in all seasons.

Two feet for my two feet: left pressed up to the exposed, root-rigged dune and colliding waves threatening to catch on ankles; returning us to what we so long walked from.

High tide hides all history.

The path grows treacherous as the sand is swept out to sea, creating the unstable shelf of a foot path to reach the meeting of the cross sea. The only way in is through the dune blowouts — the path nonlinear but out of reach of the grabbing waves. When only a summer ago, a woman sat on the small point, reading a book as Atlantic winds roughly carried sand grains into sand and skittering towards embryonic dunes.

Salt already crusts on lashes and chaps faces. The break in the barrier island is close, allowing these winds and strong waves in to an otherwise protected beach.

Tentative hope lies in the clearing water of the kettle pond tucked behind the tall mounds within the swale, away from the busy beach. Now crowned by phragmites with no more sea water reaching the fresh, the water’s surface is still celebrated as the green algae slicking the surface recedes season by season.

The sand built up to stop the flow of high tide reaching the curve between the dunes. The sand slides away to crumble into still developing dune structures uneasily held together by still-lengthening roots lattice. And so the creeping of the cross sea reaches deeper.