I've been picking at rocks since I was a kid. I used to drag my mother on our bicycles to pick quartz crystals out of the red rock formations near Berwick. My father made tombstones back in Catawissa. So I guess you can say rocks are in my blood.

Ever since I moved to Half Moon Bay in the fall of '89 I've been haunting the beaches. I grew up land locked and never saw the ocean until I was 10, and that was the Atlantic Ocean in New Jersey.

Muir has the Sierras and I have the beaches. "The quickest way into the Universe is through a beach wilderness" (With apologies to John Muir.)

I ran across a very technical article in my web searches of coast fossils: "Age, Stratigraphy, and Correlations of the Late Neogene Purisima Foundation, Central California Coast Ranges". Powell, Charles L. et al.

As at best an amateur geologist this article is dense and difficult to read. However in my sojourns on beaches I was always fascinated by the different layers exposed to view. So according to my understanding there's a very interesting rock formation or system on these very same beaches.

So I'm in the process of assembling and taking photos of these exposed strata into a photo-essay. Let's see something long-winded in keeping with the article that inspired me: "A Semi-Systematic Photographic Study of the Exposed Rock Strata on the Beaches Between Pomponio and Pescadero Taken Over a Period of Several Years." Yes I think that'll do.

And the photo above? Well it's my "field office", a place free of the many falling rocks, a shelter from the wind, and a nice dark spot where I can see my computer screen.

So stay tuned. More to come soon.