A Collection of Wanderings

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WHAT TO NOTICE

– This stone is rounded but not perfectly smooth. Its broad, flattened shape retains small irregularities, while its edges have been softened by movement and collision.

– The surface is blue-gray with scattered pale tan and cream-colored grains. 

– Glacially deposited rocks are often angular when first released from the ice. Rounded edges indicate that water and waves continued the work, rolling the stone against sand and other rocks until its sharper edges were worn away

HOW IT TRAVELS:

The Laurentide Ice Sheet advanced across New England carrying an unsorted mixture of clay, sand, gravel, cobbles and boulders. As the ice retreated from New England beginning approximately 18,000 years ago, meltwater deposited enormous quantities of this material. Cape Cod emerged as a landscape of glacial moraines and outwash plains.

Marconi Beach lies along the Wellfleet outwash plain, one of the glacial landforms built from sediment deposited by meltwater flowing away from the ice. The Cape Cod landscape visible today is only about 15,000 years old. The Atlantic arrived later. By approximately 6,000 years ago, rising seas had reached the Cape and waves began eroding its glacial deposits. Stones once held inside the land were gradually exposed, released onto the beach and worked by the water.

THE INTERESTING PART

This stone was shaped by more than one force.

The glacier carried it south and left it within the material that became Cape Cod. The Atlantic later uncovered it. Waves rolled, struck and rubbed it against other stones, gradually rounding its edges and flattening its form.

A stone that appears motionless may therefore be evidence of immense movement: rock carried by ice, released by meltwater, uncovered by erosion and reshaped by the Atlantic.

WHERE I FOUND IT:

A discovery on the beach on the east side of Cape Cod and on the Gulf of Maine. The gales that stirred and churned the Atlantic likely tore the seaweed loose and delivered it to shore. The stone carried a much older history. It may already have been waiting on the beach, or the same storm may have uncovered and repositioned it.

WORDS TO KNOW:

Cobble – A rock fragment measuring approximately 64 to 256 millimeters, or about 2.5 to 10 inches. These stones are about 6 inches across.

Glacial drift – The collective term for rock and sediment transported and deposited directly or indirectly by glacial ice

Glacial erratic – A rock transported by glacial ice and deposited away from its original bedrock source. Although the term is often associated with large boulders, transported stones occur in many sizes.