Shells in the Wind

Listening for Echoes

Mount Baldi

In my early years in Los Angeles, the mountains shaped the horizon—the San Gabriels to the north, the Santa Monicas running through the city, and somewhere beyond them, the ocean.

When I was ten, my family returned to the Netherlands. The landscape opened into grasslands, woods, and waterways that felt quieter, closer. Much later, during walking vacations, as soon as I entered the woods, I could feel something in me settle—the whoosh of silence. The forests of Germany hold that same deep stillness.

De Veluwe

In the Netherlands, the paths often open onto waterways: ponds, canals, rivers, and sometimes the sea. Their soft reflections bring a different kind of calm.

Several years ago, I watched an Irish movie where the characters were strolling along the ocean, seagulls calling. Something in it felt familiar—a longing. It was the ocean breeze, the rhythm of the waves.

Now, as I frequent the bay most days, I begin to realize that many of my ancestors lived by water: those in Voorne-Putten and Zeeland and those in the Indonesian Archipelago of volcanic mountains surrounded by ocean.

Photo of Java by Mizanudin

Perhaps that is why my granddaughter and I have been gathering shells together and making chimes. She looks up now and then to show me what she has found. Collecting is a spontaneous process—a free and joyful discovery of beautiful shapes and colors with a sense of possibility. We found ourselves arranging them according to their shapes, types, and sizes. They look better when each shell can be seen. We added the small, beautiful semi-precious stones left over from my mother’s beaded necklace project—a subtle way to create space.

My granddaughter made two long strands of shells with stones, one to give away to her friend. She created a color pattern with stones in turquoise and rose. I crafted three strands of shells to hang from a piece of driftwood, its surface smoothed and pale from long turning in the tide. When the wind moves through the shells, they answer one another.

©2026 Astrid Berg