Sunday sands: Utah, Omaha, Gold

 

I’m in France, so this provides a theme. I’ll start with France’s most famous – and infamous – beaches: Normandy. I visited that stretch of coast for the first time almost exactly a year ago; I found myself carried along in an ever-changing and unpredictable series of emotional responses, sobering, awe-inspiring, depressing, fascinating, and mystifying.

It is said that the sands of the Normandy beaches reflect, like those of beaches around the world, local ingredients: they contain grains of steel.

I think that no further narrative is required.

 

Comments

[Richard Bready]

Very odd indeed to consider these scenes as landforms. Your final images remind me:

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work -
I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.

Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.
(Carl Sandburg)