ME: “It’s on my mobile, between my toes, in my crack, down my back, even round the rim of the bloody can. Sand everywhere.”
HIM: “Sand… mmmm… did you know that surprisingly, sand doesn’t come from sea. I know that seems to defy everything we know and love about sand, but it mostly comes from rivers.”
ME: “What!?!”
HIM: “Yeah. Most sand begins its life inland, locked inside mountains and cliffs. Rain, frost, time … breaks rock apart. Then rivers take over, dragging those fragments kilometre after kilometre, smashing them together again and again until they’re ground down to grains so small they can’t actually be broken down any further. It’s like literally impossible. Anyway… that’s when they reach the sea.”
And then… the ocean doesn’t so much create sand as finish it off by washing it back and forth, sorting it by size, and piling it up where land meets water.”
NAZ: “But I don’t see any rivers around here.”
HIM: “That’s because you’re looking now, not then.
On some beaches, sand was carried by rivers that still exist, others by rivers that have shifted course, and some by rivers that disappeared thousands or even millions of years ago. Coastlines move. River mouths wander. Landscapes forget their own history.
So you don’t need a river next to every beach. You just need a planet that’s had rivers for a very long time. If you’ve ever wondered why Mars is full of sand…”
ME:… “I haven’t, but now you mention it… Don’t bloody tell me it’s because there used to be loads of rivers there.”
HIM LOOKING SMUG: “Exactly,”
ME LOOKING SMUGLY AT NAZ: “Exactly.” and what I’m basically saying is “See… I told you he was H.A.F”
