Sand Castles

I guess you’d have to call this a miracle but if I have to be the victim of a miracle why did it have to be this one.

Maybe it was the electric storm that triggered it. I’ve been doing my bike tour around the coast of Australia and had my tent set up right down by the beach at Scotts Head. Sometime around 2 a.m. this ferocious thunderstorm hit and I swear at one point I must have been struck by lightning. The tent went blue with crackling sparks followed by a flash that blinded me and a crash that deafened me. I must have been knocked out because the next thing I remembered was awakening to bright sunlight with a splitting headache.

I thought maybe a walk on the beach would fix me up so off I went towards the head at the end of the beach. My head felt like it would explode and this flock of seagulls got up my nose with their raucous squabbling over a dead fish. As my headache went up a notch, I pictured myself throwing a stick at them and suddenly this stick materialized made of sand looking exactly like my picture and flew into the flock bouncing off a couple of them and sending them flying off in fright. I walked over and picked up the “stick” made of sand. What happened? Did this have anything to do with me?

I looked down at the sand and pictured a hot dog and suddenly there was this swirl of sand and this perfect sculpture of a hot dog was there. I’m sure I could see the mustard smear along the length of the sausage. Then I pictured it on a plate and sure enough, more swirling sand and the hot dog lifted and was placed gently on this perfect sand platter.
There was no doubt that I was doing this and equally no doubt that I had any clue as to how I was doing it. I just pictured something and the next second the sand was obeying my will. How about something with a bit more substance? I visualized a Rhine castle and as I pictured the ramparts and turrets, the sand did its swirling dance and there was this sand castle worthy of a Michelangelo. As I stood their gawking at it, this little boy came up behind me. “Wow mister. Did you build that?”

“I guess I did mate, but I sure don’t know how.”, I answered.

I turned and wandered down the beach a bit more leaving my admirer and castle behind. I wanted to try some more things out, but not with an audience. When I thought I was far enough away, I thought of a street light, one of those standard everyday poles that line the streets and sure enough, another swirl and there was a perfect copy about 8 meters tall and looking all ready to shine that night. Then I tried another one, but this time further down the beach. No problem and then another about 50 meters away. Still no problem. And all of this “sculpting”, if that’s what I was doing seemed to happen without effort. I had moved hundreds of kilos of sand around just by thinking about it and hadn’t raised a drop of sweat.

Ok I thought let’s try something a bit more robust. I conjured up a 1963 Volkswagen Beetle, my first car and with a bit more flurry and a few more seconds, there it was, complete with a coat hanger that I used to replace the missing radio antenna.

I’d like to say that I felt like a genius, like a superman but I didn’t. I mean I didn’t really do anything. I just thought some pictures at the sand and there it was. If I was looking a gift horse in the mouth, I sure hadn’t settled in on what the gift was.

Suddenly my musings were interrupted by the blaring klaxon of the shark alarm. I turned and ran back down the beach and there was the unmistakable fin of a large white heading towards some panic stricken swimmers. Without thinking I pictured this cannon ball hurtling at the shark’s snout and sure enough, this basketball sized boulder shot away from me and connected as thought just at the tip of his nose. I’m not sure what happened next, but the shark was gone and the beach was filled with a bunch of bewildered spectators.

“Did you see that?” “Yeah, but what was it?”

As the commotion died down, I slipped away from the crowd back to my gear. Time to sit down with a coffee and bacon and egg roll and think about what’s next. And I sure knew that life on the beach was never going to be the same again.