Ripples and Waves

What brought me back to Sal del Rey was the thought of photographing the ripples and currents in the sand. These ripples are caused by flooding from periodic rain storms. One thing distinctive about South Texas are the longer alternating periods of rain and drought. Sometimes the sands at Sal del Rey are all smoothed out. At such times the ripples may be at too large a scale to see and perhaps as much an effect of the wind as the rain. But after a rain there are ripples everywhere. The landscape has been combed by the weather as if Buddhist monks had raked the garden where they meditate.

One type of ripple tends to be reflection of another type of ripple. Ripples in the wind cause waves of ripples in the salt sea, which in turn cause ripples on sea floor. One ripple represents another ripple and each is a word for the other or a reverberation. It reminds me of the layers of an onion; peeling one reveals another. Or the outer form of matter revealing the an interior spiritual form. In the Hindu Vedanta the earth is said to be the body of God or Brahman. I'm not sure that the ripples do lead to an interior spirit, though; if this existence is a turtle standing on another turtle, it may be turtles all the way down.

Some of the ripples go underground where a rivulet disappears and emerges again in the distance. Some are caused by small fish. The slender fingerlings may be minnows or perhaps even a variety of salmon, like cisco, that take long migrations from sea and upriver. When I neared the concentric ripples the fish made, the ripples calmed or fled elsewhere. Why were they rippling so much? To eat plankton? To dance? Do these animals know why they ripple? Of course they do.

The ripples in the sand beneath the water reflect the waves in the water, but they are also deflections cause by obstacles, like stones and shells in the sand. And then there is also the backwash from the surf. The waves created caves and escarpments along the shore. And they would leave isolated pools. I'm not sure these pools wouldn't be tide pools. Tide pools have a greater density of life. They are an interzone between the land and the sea. They are not unlike the rain forest or coral reefs for sustaining life.

More photos of Ripples and Waves.