Just wondering. No answers.

I look at a beach and I wonder. What shaped it like this? How? And how long did it take?

Sometimes there are answers. Sometimes (usually?) they include words like "maybe", "possibly", "it has been suggested".

Wind, water, ice, (moving or still). Gravity, friction, chemistry, heat, life. And time, lots of time. Or not.

These are photos from one hour on one small stretch of beach. 

At the bottom of the intertidal zone. Soft rock, shaped by waves, currents, colonized by barnacles and oysters.The tip is probably exposed at high tide. This rock is marked on the boating map, labelled "awash rock".

Glacial erratics. Oysters, barnacles, seaweeds. Quadra Island in the background. The current in this channel runs fast and strong and sometimes chaotic.

Wide stripes, running out to the water: rocks, then flat stone or sand, then rocks, then ...

Upper beach, almost flat. Water draining from pools around rocks as the tide goes out carves lines in the sand. (Land to the right here, ocean to the left.)

A bit higher up. The tide is far out, and the sand is almost dry, but water still trickles down from the land above the tidal zone, seeping through the sand.

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Miro una playa y me pregunto: ¿Qué le dió esta configuración? ¿Cómo? ¿Y cuánto tiempo fue necesario?

A veces hay respuestas. A veces —¿Casi siempre? — las respuestas incluyen palabras como "tal vez", "posiblemente", "se ha sugerido".

El viento, el agua, hielo, tranquilos o en movimiento. La gravedad, la química, la fricción, las temperaturas, la vida. Y tiempo. Mucho tiempo. O no.

estas son fotos que saqué en un tramo pequeño de playa. 

1. Donde termina la zona intermareal. Rocas suaves, esculpidas por las olas, las corrientes, y colonizadas por bálanos y ostiones. La cima probablemente sigue descubierta con la marea alta.  Esta roca está señalada en el mapa para navegantes.
2. Bloques erráticos, dejados por los glaciares.  Ostiones, bálanos, algas marinas. Al otro lado del estrecho se ve la isla Quadra. La corriente en este sitio corre rápido y fuertemente, a veces en forma caótica.
3. Franjas amplias, corriendo en dirección hacia el agua. Piedras, luego roca aplanada o arena, luego rocas, luego ... se repite.
4. En la zona superior de la playa, casi horizontal. Agua que drena desde pozas alrededor de las rocas al salir la marea dibuja lineas en la arena. (Tierra firma queda a la derecha.)
5. Esto está en la parte más alta de la zona intermareal. La marea ha dejado casi seca la arena, pero agua sigue escurriendo, bajando de la tierra firma.

Immigrant stones.

It was low tide at Oyster Bay. And I looked at the ground under my feet.

Big rocks, small rocks, stones. Looking east, across to the mainland.

The rocks are rip-rap, brought in years ago to protect the bay, forming the outer leg of a U, and creating bird habitat. On the far side, the "outside", the remains of derelict ships poke through the sand below the usual low tide line.

When we first saw it, eight years ago, the fourth side of the lagoon was just a short strip of gravel, just a little serif on the U. Now, as the currents have brought around sand and even stones from the outer coast, it reaches most of the way across the entrance, apparently aiming to close off the lagoon entirely some day.

This is an old photo we took from the tip of the rocks at mid-tide, 2009. Facing the bottom of the U.

July, 2009, again. Geese  on the tip of the gravel bar.

And now, I walk where before there was only water.

Out near the new tip of the gravel bar. Barnacles and mussels cover the stones; underneath I found crabs and snails.

And on the inner edge of the bar, clean sand. Water running down as the tide retreats leaves sharply cut channels in the sand.